teh 
is 


oe 


the 

tectts? 
Vtharitait 
rte 
y 


f 


Y sm, it 


am ES 


at Bi 
TyT. 
7} 


tel? 
ae rT 
: t 


Te 


Rebs ok TS) 


Bateia at, Sates 


os ee 


tiett elete? 
Shake ; z i ; Pep teh yay 
ae seistyetaeetitasaia: 


ih 





RS 


‘ 


eieediset 
Sets 


SG tpaeeatates 


Be 


Tee ets 
fetetaks>, 


i 
‘i 
f 
: 


*, 
isos 


a 


T 


i. 


STi Tsts: iH i 
ae 


~ 


ie 
? est 


peprperess 
ee 


fete 


eR 
+4 


iv 
tt i 


259 


sf 


syast. 


qats> 


NiPie et, 


a2) 


, 


‘ai 


args Tet 
“fy 


Rat 


[cons 














NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 
AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 


STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN LIVING 


CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP Francis J. McConnell. 
CHRISTIAN NEIGHBORLINESS Staley F. Davis, 


THE CHRISTIAN’S PERSONAL RELIGION 
Clarence Tucker Craig. 


ALCOHOL AND THE NEW AGE Deets Pickett. 


NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN AND PROBLEMS OF 
TO-DAY Madeleine Sweeny Miller. 








CHRIST IN THE HOME OF MARY AND MARTHA 


Ran OF PRINGE: 
STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN LIVING> 


HENRY H. MEYER, Editor WAY | fa ie fal i 
WADE CRAWFORD BARCLAY, Associate Edito: Ae 


<0 OGICAL SE 


L. Ui 


New Testament Women 


and Problems of To-day 


By ss 
MADELEINE SWEENY MILLER 


(MRS. J. LANE MILLER) 





FOREWORD BY 
S. PARKES CADMAN, D.D. 


President of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ 
in America 


A group of discussion studies for young women of to-day, 
in business and in the home, inviting them to consider the 
experiences of certain New Testament women who met Jesus 
and his disciples and found in that contact the solution 
of problems confronted in everyday life. 


Approved by the Committee on Curriculum 
of the Board of Education of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church 





THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 


Copyright, 1926, by 
MADELEINE SWEENY MILLER 


All rights reserved, including that of translation inte 
foreign languages, including the Scandinavian 


_ The Bible text used in this volume is taken from the American Standard 
Edition of the Revised Bible, copyright, 1901, by Thomas Nelson & Sons, and is 
used by permission. 


Printed in the United States of America 


DEDICATED TO THE GIRLS OF THE SECOND 
MILE BIBLE CLASS OF THE HANSON PLACE 
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, BROOKLYN, 
NEW YORK, WHOSE CONSISTENT CHOOSING 
OF MARY’S “GOOD PART,” WHOSE SILENT 
SACRIFICES STUBBORNLY MAINTAINED 
AMID THE PRESSURES OF METROPOLITAN 
LIFE, WHOSE GLAD-HEARTED GOING OF 
THE ‘SECOND MILE”? WHEN THE FIRST 
WAS TRAVELED WITH DIFFICULTY—IN A 
WORD, WHOSE AMAZING SPIRITUALITY, 
HAVE VINDICATED THEIR GENERATION IN 
THE EYES OF MANY 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
An ACQUITTAL FOR YOUTH. ................ 8 
PCH WORT ey eed Moat antea te eM IC HSN sc AHN 9 
AutTHOR’sS INTRODUCTION.............000000. 11 
I. My Jos anp I—Do WE Frt?............... 15 

II. Can I Continue My Business CAREER AND 
MAINTAIN A Happy HoME?............... 29 

Ill. My Twic on THe Famitry TREE—WHAT OF 
1 NN Oa c4 89 y Uy De i ake a UAE a a GM dE 40 

IV. Contacts Wirsin My Home—Are Tuey 
CONTHTSITEA DD Coste aeen Sere Cita] nD ANN ETE IAS BLAKE 51 
V. My Frrenps—WHERE SHALL I Make THEM? 70 
VI. My Letsurre—AsseT or LIABILITY?......... 83 

VII. My Heautry anp CLtotHes—Do Turey MATTER 
TO THE COORTMUINELS bina lic iay eareummii avatar cone ahy 97 

VIII. Tue Litrur Lost Arts or Lire—How Can I 
Pini 09 3 BCA Rg ae COIS ALD EE UTS OME AMET Re ELLAND Be 108 

IX. Lire’s DisaproIntMENTs—How Swati I Face 
RETR Ce HUN SUL ee SUE rar oD ATL aL iaides VeAeh a Mahal ag 121 
X. To Wuom Am I NeIcgHspor?................ 133 
XI. Wines—Have I Any? ..... oy Sonne 147 
XII. SmuencE in THE CHURCHES—OR SERVICE?....158 
Poy Sy ALAS) Eos gay cna Rar a Tt aOR ASU a TN 171 
SUGGESTIONS FOR BOOKSHELF............... 171 


REFERENCE INDEX OF WOMEN OF SCRIPTURE 
PABNTIONED (IN LEXT ee 173 


AN ACQUITTAL FOR YOUTH 


Oh, tell me not in your elderly way 
That youth is void of soul to-day! 
I have watched too much 
His compassionate touch 
To listen to what you say. 
I have seen Christ stand 
With beneficent hand 
Where youth chose the heroic and true. 
I have seen him smile when youth paid the price 
Of magnificent sacrifice 
For the sake of meeting an old debt due 
To parents who gave when their means were few. 
I have seen Christ pray 
As youth fought his way 
Past ghouls that stalked by day. 
I believe in youth 
As the friend of truth. 
He is bold as the knights of old were bold 
To salvage the best that the centuries hold. 
Who can the fact of his faith gainsay? 
He is holy in youth’s intrepid way! 
—M, 8. M. in the International Journal of 
Religious Education. 


FOREWORD 


TuHE author of New TEstaMENT WoMEN AND PROBLEMS 
oF To-pay is well equipped by her training and experi- 
ence to deal with the problems of her sex as viewed from 
the standpoint of our Lord’s teaching. Mrs. Miller’s con- 
tacts with diversified types of feminism have been un- 
usually varied and vital. As a graduate of one of our 
leading colleges and the wife of an honored ministerial 
brother, who is exercising an influential ministry in New 
York Gity, this gifted woman admirably serves as the 
mediator and interpreter for seemingly opposed ideas and 
groups. She wisely centers her emphasis in the New 
Testament, than which there is no more comprehensive 
and elevating source of instruction for women. Her 
method is Socratic, eliciting the desired results by means 
of questions and answers. Her treatment is sympathetic, 
with those touches of the intimate and the personal which 
add to the interest and profit of the book. 

From its introductory appreciation of the modern ap- 
praisal of woman through the successive twelve chap- 
ters, which range from business careers and “the little lost 
arts of life” to “life’s disappointments” and “silence or 
service in the churches,” the volume’s pages keep an equal 
pace, and the tide of interest steadily rises. I wonder how 
much our adolescent girls and young women know of the 
noble sisterhood Mrs. Miller presents here; of Mary and 
Martha at Bethany, of Lydia and, Elisabeth, of the blessed 
Virgin herself. I wonder, again, if the distinctive merits 
of the book are not traceable to the fact that a cultured 
Christian woman speaks here for these outstanding women 
of the New Testament. Surely, including as they do the 
mother of our Lord and those tender helpers who stood 
nearest to him during his ministry on earth, they will 
well repay our better acquaintance. 

There are numerous claimants for the modern young 
woman’s intellectual and religious loyalties. Strange gods 


9 


10 FOREWORD 


solicit her virgin heart, and untried ways invite her feet. 
The consequences of her choice travel far beyond herself. 
As the fountain of the race she is also, to change the 
metaphor, the rock on which man either builds or splits. 
IT am confident that many things offered to her to-day are 
worthy and helpful. I am equally confident that not a 
few that are loudly advertised as beneficial for her are 
vicious and harmful. For these if for no other reasons— 
and there are others not a few—I am deeply grateful that 
our author has referred the complicated matters she dis- 
cusses to the Lord of all life and love. 

Her policy in this reference will in my judgment secure 
the hearty approval of thousands of wives and daughters. 
The husbands and sons whom they ensphere with sacri- 
ficial service cannot fail to approach the problem with 
renewed intelligence after reading Mrs. Miller’s volume. I 
wish it a wide circulation among teachers of every grade 
and in every sort of school, public or private, sacred or 
secular. Most of all I pray that the Christ upon the 
altar of whose church this book is dedicated may be glori- 
fied by its offering to his cause and kingdom. 

S. ParKEs CADMAN, 
President of the Federal Council 
of the Churches of Christ 
in America. 
Lent, 1926. 
Brooklyn, New York. 


AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION 


THE women who sought out Jesus in the Galilean 
multitude came with many questions on their lips or 
silent in their hearts. The first inquiry was brought 
to him, when he was only a Boy, by the mother 
who had lost his presence. Its answer contained 
his first revelation about his work in the world: 
“Knew ye not that I must be in my Father’s house?” It 
was Mary’s dilemma, too, about the exhausted wine supply 
at the Cana wedding feast which occasioned his first 
miracle. Agitated Martha of Bethany came with the 
petulant query, “Lord, dost thou not care that my sister 
did leave me to serve alone?” The Canaanitish woman 
came seeking relief for her afflicted daughter. And the 
mother of James and John punctuated her worship with a 
presumptuous request for places of power in Christ’s king- 
dom of the Spirit. The Samaritan woman was full of 
questions, which Jesus used to draw out some of his deep- 
est revelations about the nature of true worship. The 
discussion raised by the unnamed woman’s anointing 
brought to a focus the whole sacramental value of esthetics 
in devotion. And the plaint of the visitors to the Kaster 
garden, “Who shall roll us away the stone from the door 
of the tomb?” disclosed the problem of removing practical 
barriers from the way of spiritual revelation. 

Indeed, few women came without an interrogation of 
need, and none is recorded as going away with that need 
unmet. Christ’s customary, bountiful attitude was: “Give 
ye them to eat. Send them not hungry away.” 

To-day women are still bringing their vital queries to 
Jesus, whom they feel moving in the midst of their 
thronged world of affairs. What are some of the dilemmas 
they are holding up for solution? Is there guidance for 
to-day in the truths Christ revealed to the women he met 
along the path of his crowded ministry twenty centuries 
ago? 

There are professional critics of youth who are gain- 
rah 


12 AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION 


ing their livelihood by noisily proclaiming that young peo- 
ple in general are morally adrift. “What Ails Our Young 
Generation?” “The Young Person,” “Is Youth as Bad 
as It Appears?’ are popular titles in magazines of the 
hour. And, to be sure, there are many young men and 
women who have cut all bonds with the past and are 
experimenting in a costly fashion with this code of conduct 
and with that. 

But there are still groups in every community who de- 
light to search through the treasure chests of their inheri- 
tance and are finding there undreamed-of jewels, which 
they are eagerly mounting in carved platinum of new 
design. Their joy is as exuberant as was that of Sir 
Walter Scott when he discovered, hidden in a dull old 
chest, the lost regalia of Scottish kings. 

Out of the explorations of one such group of young 
women who have claimed their heritage have come the fol- 
lowing discussions. ‘These they offer to similar groups of 
girls everywhere—in business and in the home—in the 
hope that they will help them to face frankly the baffling 
situations that make being a young person to-day a more 
difficult thing than many elders would care to undertake. 

It is their prayer that in a generation described by Dr. 
Albert Parker Fitch as “lovable but irresponsible and 
superficial”; which loudly insists upon “expressing itself” 
when, too often, there is nothing inside to express, and 
upon criticizing the church it knows so superficially, these 
discussions may get across to youth two absorbing truths: 
First, there are moral laws that are just as definite as the 
laws of science undergirding the universe. Secondly, 
these laws of the spirit cannot be tampered with without 
very definite consequences. 

Just a word as to the discussion method. For the last 
few years educators have been increasingly feeling that 
teaching is not something done by the teacher to the 
student, as one has tersely said; that the pupil is not an 
empty cup held up to the pedagogue to be filled. In the 
realm of religion, young men and women have been forc- 
ing this discovery upon their elders by demanding that 
they be allowed to take an active part in the discussion of 
great truths laid before them. Thus only are they able 


AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION 13 


to develop their processes of critical judgment about con- 
crete situations and to clarify their own understanding of 
the Christian way of life. To the discussion method, 
however, the objection has been raised that scientific ways 
cannot be successfully applied to spiritual studies; that 
young people do not have enough resources from reading 
and experience to conduct a discussion as profitably as a 
teacher who has a large personal library and the observa- 
tions of a generation at his disposal; that it raises ques- 
tions without supplying the “meat” for solving them. But 
to all these I reply, Jesus himself used the discussion 
method very frequently. Instead of flinging his opinions 
dogmatically at his inquirers he loved to draw out their 
own thoughts by asking them questions. When the lawyer 
came, inquiring the prerequisites for eternal life, Jesus 
said to him, “What is written in the law? how readest 
thou?” Again, to the query “Who is my neighbor?” 
Christ replied by relating a concrete story—the parable 
of the good Samaritan—followed by the very pertinent 
inquiry “Which of these three, thinkest thou, proved neigh- 
bor unto him that fell among the robbers?” Instance 
after instance of his use of this very method of drawing out 
the belief of his learners might be cited. “But whom say 
ye that I am?” was his method of leading to Peter’s great 
confession of his Christhood. And when the trick ques- 
tion was put to him, “Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath 
day?” he replied with another: “What man shall there be 
of you, that shall have one sheep, and if this fall into a 
pit on the sabbath day, will not lay hold on it, and lift it 
out?” Again, “Which is easier, to say, Thy sins are for- 
given thee; or to say, Arise and walk?” What an inter- 
rogation to hurl at even the wisdom of scribes! 

So may we ever remain seekers, urging others to become 
questioners, until the day shall come when we shall run 
to Jesus, saying, as did Simon and his friends when the 
needy clamorings of the multitude forced them to hunt out 
the Master in his desert place of prayer, “All are seeking 
thee,” who is himself, eternally, the pearl of eae price. 


The parsonage of Hanson Place Methodist Episcopal 
Church, Brooklyn, New York. 


) Ad Hh 7 Wht 
any ‘ tut tbe 





CHAPTER I 
MY JOB AND I—DO WE FIT? 


To a large discussion group of young women, most of 
them in business and a few of them married, the follow- 
ing question was put, together with several others, on a 
questionnaire to be answered anonymously: “If you were 
free to follow any career in the world to-day, what would 
you select?” The replies brought many surprises, Three 
girls said they would like to be missionaries. Several 
frankly said, “Wife and mother; I hate business.” Others 
indicated, “Nurse or social-service worker.” Only one 
replied, “My present position—that of a modern business 
woman.” Why were so few in satisfactory situations? 

Have you ever put this query to yourself? Is your job 
large enough to challenge your best abilities or does it 
pinch, like a too narrow shoe? Or is it too large for 
you, so that you slip up and down in it like a shoe too 
wide? Much of the world’s discontent is due to misfits. 
But the very principle of variety of talents (read Paul’s 
famous passage in 1 Corinthians 12) has as its corollary 
the fact that there is a congenial task somewhere for every- 
one in the world if jobs and people could be brought to- 
gether. This is why colleges are stressing vocational 
guidance, and Young Women’s Christian Associations 
and churches are offering lectures on life callings. It is 
not simply a matter of “Would I be successful in this 
work ?” but also “Would I be happy ?” 

Let us examine the career of a New Testament woman 
with a view to discovering some tests by which we can 
judge the “fit” of our vocation. 


MartTHA 
Luke 10. 38-42. 
Now as they went on their way, he entered into a certain 
village: and a certain woman named Martha received him 
into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who also 


15 


16 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


sat at the Lord’s feet, and heard his word. But Martha was 
cumbered about much serving; and she came up to him, and 
said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister did leave me to 
serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. But the Lord 
answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art anxious 
and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful: 
for Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken 
away from her. 


John 11. 1-11, 17-40. 


Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, of the 
village of Mary and her sister Martha. And it was that Mary 
who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet 
with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. The sisters 
therefore sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou 
lovest is sick. But when Jesus heard it, he said, This sick- 
ness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son 
of God may be glorified hereby. Now Jesus loved Martha, 
and her sister, and Lazarus. When therefore he heard that 
he was sick, he abode at that time two days in the place where 
he was. Then after this he saith to the disciples, Let us go 
into Judwa again. The disciples say unto him, Rabbi, the 
Jews were but now seeking to stone thee; and goest thou 
thither again? Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours 
in the day? If a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, 
because ‘the seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk 
in the night, he stumbleth, because the light is not in him. 
These things spake he: and after this he saith unto them, 
Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep; but I go, that I may 
awake him out of sleep. 

So when Jesus came, he found that he had been in the 
tomb four days already. Now Bethany was nigh unto Jeru- 
salem, about fifteen furlongs off; and many of the Jews had 
come to Martha and Mary, to console them concerning their 
brother. Martha therefore, when she heard that Jesus was 
coming, went and met him: but Mary still sat in the house. 
Martha therefore said unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been 
here, my brother had not died. And even now I know that, 
whatsoever thou shalt ask of God, God will give thee. Jesus 
saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith 
unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection 
at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, 
and the life: he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall 
he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never 
die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I 
have believed that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, even 
he that cometh into the world. And when she had said this, 
she went away, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, 
The Teacher is here, and calleth thee. And she, when she 
heard it, arose quickly, and went unto him. (Now Jesus was 
not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY Ae 


Martha met him.) The Jews then who were with her in the 
house, and were consoling her, when they saw Mary, that 
she rose up quickly and went out, followed her, supposing that 
she was going unto the tomb to weep there. Mary therefore, 
when she came where Jesus was, and saw him, fell down at 
his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my 
brother had not died. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, 
and the Jews also weeping who came with her, he groaned in 
the spirit, and was troubled, and said, Where have ye laid 
him? They say unto him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. 
The Jews therefore said, Behold how he loved him! But 
some of them said, Could not this man, who opened the eyes 
of him that was blind, have caused that this man also should 
not die? Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh 
to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a stone lay against it. 
Jesus saith, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of 
him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time the 
body decayeth; for he hath been dead four days. Jesus saith 
unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou believedst, thou 
shouldest see the glory of God? 


John 12. 1-8. 

Jesus therefore six days before the passover came to Beth- 
any, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus raised from the dead. 
So they made him a supper there: and Martha served; but 
Lazarus was one of them that sat at meat with him. Mary 
therefore took a pound of ointment of pure nard, very precious, 
and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her 
hair: and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment. 
But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, that should betray 
him, saith, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred 
shillings, and given to the poor? Now this he said, not 
because he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, 
and having the bag took away what was put therein. Jesus 
therefore said, Suffer her to keep it against the day of my 
burying. For the poor ye have always with you; but me ye 
have not always. 


Tur Riagot KIND OF A JOB 


Work is a normal state. Successes have usually come 
when “the people had a mind to work.” Man has turned 
to a genuine blessing the labor that seemed originally sent 
as a curse after the desecrated leisure of paradise. Heaven. 
may be characterized by perfect rest, but, as Henry van 
Dyke has said, “The blessing of earth is toil.” A certain 
school teacher almost always succumbs to illness in sum- 
mer from the sheer inactivity of her long vacation; she is 
never so happy as when climbing up and down the flights 


18 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


of stairs that lead to her task of directing the studies of 
eighteen hundred boys and girls. 

Was Martha—and am I—happy in the day’s work ?— 
Upon first thought one would answer, “No, Martha com- 
plained too much about being overburdened; if she was so 
cumbered, she couldn’t have been in the right job.” But 
if Martha was not happy in her household tasks, the 
chances are that she did not go about them in the right 
way. Her preparations for guests were too elaborate. 
James Hoover, of Borneo, was once entertained in an 
American home where the hostess was constantly jumping 
up from the table to bring in additional dainties. “Sit 
still, sister,’ he pleaded. ‘We have dainties in Borneo— 
fruits unimaginable to the Western mind. Once you have 
tasted the ‘durian’ you would travel the world over for 
this bewitching fruit. I do not mean to be discourteous 
but [’d much rather have you listen to the good news from 
Borneo than have you so burdened with serving dainty 
morsels to me.” Martha’s tendency always was to be too 
active. It was she, and not the quiet Mary, who ran out 
to meet the approaching Christ; it was she who fussed 
about Lazarus having been dead four days and his body 
decaying when the Lord proposed to restore him. | 

If Martha had budgeted her time, as modern young 
housekeepers do to-day, allotting certain time to market- 
ing, preparation of meals, etc., might she not have found 
her work less cumbersome? Students at Vassar College 
recently distributed to the campus group a questionnaire 
headed by the caption, “Save your time: it may be worth 
something.” It invited the students to outline their daily 
activities, showing the amount of time spent on each, in 
an effort to eliminate waste and develop a well-balanced 
program of intellectual, spiritual, and recreational pur- 
suits. Try this yourself. Only by some such methodical 
arrangement was Susannah Wesley able to allot to John 
and Charles and all her other children their portion of her 
time for spiritual culture. Only by such an arrangement 
was Julia Ward Howe able to be a public servant and a 
faithful mother. Before applying the test of happiness to 
your own situation inquire whether you are bringing the 
right method to your work. 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 19 


Anyone who dreads the dawn of the business day and 
drives himself to his task like a quarry slave is not 
properly adjusted. “I just love my position,” a young 
woman purchasing agent for a paper-utilities firm re- 
marked. “I can scarcely wait to get to my office, open 
the mail, and line up the orders for the day.” She had 
passed the dilemma stage so well described in a letter writ- 
ten by a young person just about to be graduated from 
college and puzzled about selecting a profession: 


My plight is that right now I am at that age where, not 
having tried anything, I feel I could be a success at anything. 
Cut my field of choice down to any one thing and I believe 
I could make a go of it. I have a rather high opinion of my 
capabilities. But the question is not one of success but of 
happiness. In what field would life have the most meaning? 
... 1 have for some time harbored the illusion that I could 
write, be a critic, go into teaching, and aim for a professor- 
ship in philosophy or in English, or even go into the minis- 
try. I could run a modernist church. 

It is one thing to think and another thing to do. Wouldn’t 
it be awful to make the plunge and then be dissatisfied or 
fail? You see, in considering a profession I am at a disad- 
vantage. There is the influence of precedent to overcome, 
and that precedent is always whispering to me that it would 
be so much easier to just drift into business and forget it all, 
and have my home and my car and my daily chores, and live 
and die and amount to nothing!? 


Nothing ig more certain to make one unhappy—and in 
the end unsuccessful—than the divided mind. Once a 
work has been undertaken, it is unfair to judge its fitness 
till one has given it the whole of one’s attention. 

Is it the highest type of work of which Martha—and 
I—are capable ?—Martha’s abilities were not limited to 
kitchen talents. Her work may have been menial, but she 
brought no menial soul to its performance. It is easy to 
find evidences of a deep spirituality that might have made 
her as much'a mystic as Mary had she not been more 
needed at her post by the stove. It was she whose faith 
was great enough to exclaim: “Lord, if thou hadst been 
here, my brother had not diéd. And even now I know that, 
whatsoever thou shalt ask of God, God will give thee.” 


1From ‘‘The Contributors’ Column,” Ailantic Monthly, July, 1925; used by 
permission, 


20 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


It was directly to Martha that Christ addressed the im- 
mortal words that have soothed grieving hearts ever since: 
“T am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on 
me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth 
and believeth on me shall never die.” And it was prac- 
tical, plodding, often-fussy Martha who replied, “Yea, 
Lord: I have believed that thou art the Christ, the Son of 
God, even he that cometh into the world.” This is a 
longer conversation on spiritual matters than is recorded 
even of Mary with Christ. It was Martha who went to 
Mary with the news: “The Teacher is here, and calleth 
thee.” 

It seems evident, therefore, that Martha was really 
capable of a higher type of work than that which is usually 
set down opposite her name. But she was doing the 
thing that was most needed and. that she was also best 
fitted to do. This, after all, is the real issue. When Dr. 
W. T. Grenfell was a young interne in the London Uni- 
versity Hospital he considered various openings that 
loomed up for him in London. But to them all he applied 
this acid question: “Js this the thing the world needs most 
from me and that I can do best?” So he determined to 
Jeave the city where already too many shingles were hang- 
ing out and cast his lot in the lonely Labrador, which he 
has been blessing ever since with his manifold ministry of 
healing, teaching, and befriending the fisher folk of that 
bleak northland. 

Many young women are wasting ten-talent capacities on 
one-talent jobs and need someone to uproot them utterly. 
A girl with a Columbia degree and a scintillating per- 
sonality, enriched by a religious experience that had 
worked its way through college doubts to abiding certain- 
ties under the wise preaching of her pastor, was support- 
ing herself and mother by secretarial work in a life-insur- 
ance company. 

“Harriet,” her Bible teacher said very suddenly one 
day, “you’re entirely too big for your job. Do get out of 
that office and make yourself a director of religious educa- 
tion in some enterprising church, or something really fit 
for your abilities !” 

“Could I do that? I always thought I would like to 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 21 


do something of the sort but didn’t know there was such 
a job. How would I go about it?” she replied. 

Within a few months it was arranged to have a brother 
assume the mother’s support, money was borrowed from 
the Student Loan Fund of the church, and Harriet was 
on her way to take up life-insurance business of a differ- 
ent sort. 

A girl who had come from Iowa to study nursing in an 
Kastern hospital was expelled for an indiscretion with 
an orderly. Alarmed at finding herself in the city with no 
source of income, she appealed to a minister, begging him 
to get her some sort of work. Even a file-clerk’s wage 
would be acceptable. He succeeded in getting her a 
beginner’s job in a broker’s office at fifteen dollars a week, 
but soon she returned to him. “I feel so out of my ele- 
ment,” she said. “I have within me the making of a good 
nurse. I know it. I came Hast to follow a noble profes- 
sion, and just see what one hasty misjudgment has lowered 
me to!” That minister succeeded in having her accepted 
in a hospital in another city and kept in touch with her 
until she had become a graduate nurse with her coveted 
R.N. Now she has fully recovered from that “inferiority 
complex” which is one of the deadliest foes that can assail 
a personality. 

A Methodist nurse who had served overseas during the 
war came back to America to live with her Christian 
Science sister, whom she loved very dearly. Together they 
opened a small store for women’s apparel. But before 
long Mary felt that she was suppressing her talents, with- 
holding from the world service it needed sorely. She tried 
to satisfy the urge by doing nursing through her county 
Red Cross during the influenza epidemic. Still she felt 
restless. One day she boarded a train to New York City, 
went to the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, and said: “Can you use a good, husky 
nurse anywhere at all in the world? And would I do?” 
So high were her qualifications that the board jumped at 
the chance, and before she had time to regret leaving her 
sister she was on board a Pacific Mail steamer for Sumatra, 
where she has been blessing a teeming city with ministra- 
tions not only of a nurse but often of a physician also. 


22 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


There is no doubt in her mind or in the hearts of the 
city that she is “a good fit,” using her “utmost for the 
highest.” 

Sometimes girls realize that they are misfits but are 
willing to endure that discomfort for the sake of someone 
else. This sort of thing is the embodiment of noblesse 
oblige. 

“Why have you stopped attending art school?” a young 
woman with marked ability as an illustrator was asked by 
a friend. 

“Well,” she replied, “mother’s income is limited, and 
she cannot afford to send Betsy and me both to school this 
year. As Betsy. is lame and can’t enjoy many things, I 
feel her school life means more to her than mine possibly 
could to me, so I’m just staying at home this winter, help- 
ing mother with the housework. When Betsy has finished 
high school, I hope to go back.” 

The New York Times is authority for another excellent 
illustration of a misfit consciously endured but gloriously 
adjusted. When Carmela Ponsella learned what a beau-- 
tiful soprano voice her sister had she is said to have given 
up her own music and taken a business position in order 
that Rosa might cultivate her voice. In due time Rosa was 
accepted by the Metropolitan Opera Company. Later it 
was learned that Carmela also had a superb contralto voice. 
The self-sacrificing sister’s voice was tried, she was ac- 
claimed with plaudits, and she was engaged to sing with 
Rosa as a regular member of the great group of Metropoli- 
tan singers. 

Could Martha—and can I—keep on without being 
bored ?—Ability to continue one’s work with anterest, over 
a long period of time, is a good test of its suitability. The 
first glimpse we have of Martha, in the early days of 
Christ’s ministry, shows her serving a meal; and our last 
view, just six days before his last Passover feast, reveals 
her still serving a supper to the little Bethany group. 
However, she seems to have learned in the meanwhile the 
comfortable way of doing the work for which, after all, 
she was fitted; for at the farewell meal she prepared for 
Jesus there is no indication of fussiness, no criticism, even 
of Mary’s extravagance in buying the ointment. 


‘ 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 23 


The constant desire of folks to resign, the frequent turn- 
over of labor in industry in some sections, the restlessness 
of misfit employees, are all modern evidences of malad- 
justment and must be corrected. Young people, most of 
all, show inability to keep at a job unless the skies are 
perfectly blue, and the atmosphere congenial. Wise are 
they who, in taking up a work, test its “fit” by asking 
themselves, “Will it hold my interest a year from now— 
or several years from now?” 

Well might God weary of his toil for our indifferent and 
disobedient old world! But what a strengthening revela- 
tion of his persistence Jesus gave when he said, “My 
Father worketh even until now.” Think of a task begin- 
ning before the world’s creation and still being pursued 
with unflagging interest in this late day! Let us, like 
Jesus, diligently “work the works of him that sent me, 
while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.” 
And let us so constantly safeguard the quality of our 
workmanship that the stinging condemnation sent to the 
angel of the church of Sardis will find no application to 
us “I have found no works of thine perfected before my 
God.” 


Tue Rignut AttitupE Towarp Work 


Attitude is an intangible but real and often decisive 
factor in job fitting. The sense of worthfulness of work- 
ing, as well as of the dignity and value of any particular 
task, is absolutely essential for satisfactory adjustment. 
The girl who inwardly resents the fact that she has no 
choice as to whether she will work or no is unconsciously 
prepared to find all sorts of difficulties. If her reason will 
not let her find fault with the work itself she may find 
her surroundings or her employer or fellow workers “im- 
possible.” Or she will not have her defenses up against 
the real but subtle perils to be met. 

What is an adequate motive for work?—lIs it money, 
giving power, or just the sheer joy of work faithfully done, 
in season and out, for the fine art of doing it nobly, as 
“a workman that needeth not to be ashamed”? ‘There 
is no doubt that the money side of a job is important. 
One ought not to be satisfied long with a job that does 


24 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


not make it possible to live in comfort and decency, to 
help others, and to insure a margin for emergencies. What 
effect on one’s attitude toward the job itself will be made 
by the way one spends the earnings from it? 

A girl said to a friend lately: “I never save a cent. In 
fact, I often have to borrow from mother by the end of 
the week. I just love pretty things for my room; and 
cute little five-dollar hats. And I can’t pass a candy 
store at noon hour without treating the girls. And, of 
course, bobbing and waving my hair costs a lot each 
month.” 

Her friend, whose family were all many miles away, re- 
plied: “I’?d be in terror if I did that. Last year I was 
sent suddenly to the hospital for an operation, and it cer- 
tainly eased my mind to know I had enough in the bank 
to see me through and to buy a ticket home after it was 
over.” 

One girl with a modest personal income of her own went 
to work one spring just so that she could buy a new fur 
coat the following winter. Another remarked: “Since I 
opened a tithing account at the bank, it is surprising how 
little I am spending on myself and how much fun I am 
getting out of life. I can scarcely wait for the first of the 
month to come to replenish that special account. It is 
always empty, for I just dote on giving.” 

When are the surroundings more important than the 
place?——-Martha’s environment was surely of the best, in 
the cozy home that time and again proved so attractive 
to the weary Christ. Little wonder that the simple interior 
of her dining room has given inspiration to the brush of a 
great artist of the Negro race—H. O. Tanner—whose 
painting “Christ at the Home of Mary and Martha” is in 
the permanent collection of the Carnegie Library in Pitts- 
burgh. But the modern woman’s working environment is 
largely not of her own making and often violates her per- 
sonal ideals. How about telling people that your em- 
ployer “is not in” when he only wishes to escape inter- 
views? or telling customers that articles are “greatly 
reduced” or “pure wool” when you know that this is not 
true, but that your firm wishes you so to state? What is 
going to take place in your own character? ‘The firm’s 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 25 


emphasis on good investments may gradually make one 
look exclusively for profits and quick returns, like the 
“realtoress” who subjected her family to “the six per cent 
test” in everything and, although not opposed to riding 
in her sister’s Ford, refused to buy gas, saying, “If you 
can’t afford to run the machine you ought not to have it.” 

If the atmosphere of one’s place of business clashes 
with her best Christian ideals, either it may indicate that 
the position is not a good fit, or it may offer a challenge 
to exert a wholesome influence over others. Should one 
transfer herself or transform the situation? Here are the 
contrasting ways in which two young women solved the 
problem: 

After completing one year in an Eastern medical col- 
lege where most of the students were either blatant 
agnostics or of non-Christian faiths a girl wrote to her 
Bible-class teacher: 

You will be surprised to learn that I am going to change 
my college next year. I simply cannot work in a place where 
people are always either ridiculing my faith or decomposing 
it by chemical formulas. So I am going to the Women’s 
Medical College. J believe in God and in science. Both are 
very dear to me. I have just bought a new Bible, which gives 
me great satisfaction and is a relief when I am weary with 
anatomy and embryology. 


A young woman who continued a wartime position in 
a great warehouse was appalled by the vulgarities she met 
in everyday intercourse with the girls in her office. Their 
conversations in the dressing room relative to the men 
employees and to their own leisure hours weighed down 
upon her until she felt that she must surrender her posi- 
tion, her good salary, and the place of responsibility 
reached by fidelity through the years. But she clung to 
it and was eventually able to win her way into the affec- 
tions and then into the confidence of the younger girls. 
The atmosphere began to change in the dressing room, and 
department managers noticed an increased efficiency and 
more helpful spirit among the employees. ‘The mag- 
nificence of Emily’s own character began to see itself 
mirrored in many faces that once had been hideous with 
low vulgarities; and some who had lived all year for a 


26 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


cheap seaside vacation went with her to Silver Bay and 
actually enjoyed its rare spiritual ministry in the beauty 
of sky and lake. 

Can one change the outside from within ?—-Even where 
the outer atmosphere of one’s place of work cannot be 
altered, it may be revolutionized by one’s own outlook upon 
it. One of the most popular paintings in a certain Euro- 
pean gallery is entitled “The Angels of the Kitchen.” It 
shows the interior of a medieval monastery scullery, to 
which a novice brother has been assigned to prepare a 
meal. A group of visiting noblemen, accompanied by the 
abbot, pay him a surprise visit of inspection and are amazed 
to find him on his knees in prayer. His work, however, 
is meantime progressing, for a host of angels are briskly 
taking his place, some stirring soup in the cauldron, others 
grinding spices, carrying water, arranging plates, and pre- 
paring vegetables. 

This quaint old conception has a helpful message for 
all who have menial tasks to do to-day. We may main- 
tain spiritual attitudes of soul or send our minds on de- 
lightful pilgrimages even while engaged in distasteful sorts 
of work. And by cultivating these attitudes we may sur- 
round ourselves with clouds of unseen helpers who lighten 
our tasks. It would simply revolutionize the atmosphere 
of many an office as well as a kitchen to have such a 
charming picture in sight. 


To MartHa AT BETHANY: Sprina 33 A! D. 


Though menial are her tasks, 
No menial soul she brings 

To their accomplishment; 
But joy within her sings, 

For lo! the Guest who asks 
Her ministry has taught 

How toil with meditation blent 
May be with visions fraught. 

No longer cumbered, she, but thrilled 

That his bright face has filied 

The gloom of her small dwelling place 

Again with his transforming grace. 

She little dreams that on that kingly head, 
Which pensive Mary lavishly anoints, 

While Lazarus ponders how he raised him, dead, 
Will soon be pressed dark Calvary’s waiting points. 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 2% 


Oh, come, Lord Jesus, knock again 
And say wherever toiling men 
And women feel their tasks a weight, 
“My Father worketh even until now, 
And I still work beside thee, dawn and late, 
And share with thee the drops upon thy tel § 
—M, S. M. 


QUESTIONS FoR Group Discussion 


1. What motive lies back of your work ? 

2. Are you making it difficult for business associates to 
be Christians: (a) by your attitude toward their religion? 
(b) by indulging in little moral laxities, such as leaving 
early, overstaying lunch hour, faking illness, helping your- 
self to desk supplies, gossiping about the office force, over- 
dressing to the detriment of employees on lower salaries, 
undue familiarity with your employer, or encouragement 
of “crushes” by younger girls? 

3. What are the moral dangers arising from your own 
particular work? 

4, When representing your firm are you ever aware of 
acting on different principles than when making deci- 
sions of your own? 

5. Has your sense of kindness changed to hardness, dis- 
guised, perhaps, as shrewdness, since entering the business 
world? 

6. Are low wages responsible for any of the discontent 
among business girls in your community? Are the ma- 
jority of them making a living wage? Is society paying 
the margin of difference between what some firms ought 
to pay and actually do pay their employees? For example, 
are young women dependent on Young Women’s Chris- 
tian Association dormitories to give room and meals for 
very low sums in cases where the girls’ wages are inade- 
quate for decent living? 

%. Is it possible to save on the average salary of a busi- 
ness girl living away from home in your community? Is 
any sort of health insurance possible? 

8. Is there a moral side to thrift? When ought a girl 
to begin laying aside an emergency saving fund? 

9. If you felt that you were a misfit in your position, 
would you be willing to pay the price of an “altered fit- 


28 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


ting” (going to night school after business, or living on 
borrowed capital while educating yourself for a career of 
service) ? 

10. What opportunities have you at your disposal to 
help fit other persons into right work? How far would 
you be willing to go to make such an adjustment? 

11. What would be the effect upon you if you recom- 
mended a person for a responsible position, which she 
secured and then disappeared with some of the firm’s 
money ? | 

12. Ought churches to conduct an employment bureau 
to assist their members and constituents? Is this a legit- 
imate piece of Christian social service? Plymouth 
Church, Brooklyn, is doing it. Do you know of any others 
that might ? 

13. What ought a pastor to do when he receives a re- 
quest for a recommendation to a prospective employer from 
a young woman who has repeatedly refused to unite with 
the church ? 


CHAPTER II 


CAN I CONTINUE MY BUSINESS CAREER AND 
MAINTAIN A HAPPY HOME? 


AN attractive young private secretary, in conversation 
with the other girls of the office during their lunch hour, 
was announcing her engagement. 

“Are you coming back to work after you are married ?” 
someone asked. 

“Of course,’ answered the bride-elect. ‘What should 
I do with myself all day at home? I’m too young to join 
the Ladies’ Aid Society! Besides, we’re buying a little 
house in Queens, and two salaries are better than one. So 
T’ll be back at my desk as usual.” 

She had evidently forgotten the groups of irritable wives 
and jaded husbands whom she had often watched rest- 
lessly waiting for their partners to put in an appearance 
at a restaurant near an uptown subway exit, 

The growing tendency of young wives to start out to 
work in the mornings with their husbands, turning the 
latchkey on home for the day, leads to the questions: 
What is the effect of such a regime upon the home? Can 
a girl continue her business career after marriage and also 
be a successful homemaker? 

The New Testament reveals two first-century women 
who apparently succeeded in doing so. One “carried on” 
alone in the market place of an ancient city of Asia 
Minor; the other was partner to her husband in an indus- 
try conducted within the home. 


Lyp1A: ImportTEeR oF PURPLE 


Acts 16. 11-15, 40. 

Setting sail therefore from Troas, we made a straight 
course to Samothrace, and the day following to Neapolis; and 
from thence to Philippi, which is a city of Macedonia, the first 
of the district, a Roman colony: and we were in this city 
tarrying certain days. And on the sabbath day we went 


29 


30 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


forth without the gate by a river side, where we supposed 
there was a place of prayer; and we sat down, and spake 
unto the women that were come together. And a certain 
woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, 
one that worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord 
opened to give heed unto the things which were spoken by 
Paul. And when she was baptized, and her household, she 
besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to 
the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she 
constrained us. ... And they went out of the prison, and 
entered into the house of Lydia: and when they had seen the 
brethren, they comforted them, and departed. 


Prisca: MAKER oF TENTS 


Acts 18. 1-4, 24-28. 


After these things he departed from Athens, and came to 
Corinth. .And he found a certain Jew named ‘Aquila, a man 
of Pontus by race, lately come from Italy, with his wife Pris- 
cilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to de- 
part from Rome: and he came unto them; and because he 
was of the same trade, he abode with them, and they wrought; 
for by their trade they were tentmakers. And he reasoned in 
the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded Jews and Greeks. 
... Now a certain Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian by 
race, an eloquent man, came to Ephesus; and he was mighty 
in the scriptures. This man had been instructed in the way 
of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spake and taught 
accurately the things concerning Jesus, knowing only the 
baptism of John: and he began to speak boldly in the syna- 
gogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took 
him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more 
accurately. And when he was minded to pass over into 
Achaia, the brethren encouraged him, and wrote to the disci- 
ples to receive him: and when he was come, he helped them 
much that had believed through grace; for he powerfully con- 
futed the Jews, and that publicly, showing by the scriptures 
that Jesus was the Christ. 


Romans 16. 3-5. 

Salute Prisca and Aquila my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus, 
who for my life laid down their own necks; unto whom not 
only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles: 
and salute the church that is in their house. 


1 Cor. 16. 19. 
The churches of Asia salute you. Aquila and Prisca salute 
you much in the Lord, with the church that is in their house. 
2 Tim. 4. 19a. 
Salute Prisca and Aquila. 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 31 


LypIA: ImportTER oF PURPLE 


What about her as a business woman?—Lydia was an 
importer and retailer of a very fine commodity—the purple 
cloth or garments so eagerly sought by discriminating pur- 
chasers. The cloth was probably made at Thyatira, a city 
famous as a center of weaving and dyeing, just as to-day 
New York City is the center of the garment trades, whose 
workers throng certain sections of Fifth Avenue sunning 
themselves at noon, the while discussing the business of 
their unions. If we can judge from the inscription on a 
tablet discovered there, even ancient Thyatira seems to 
have had a “purple guild.” At the time of the incident 
recorded jn Acts, Lydia was retailing her wares in Philippi, 
an important Macedonian city whose status as a Roman 
colony made it a strategic selling center. As considerable 
capital would be involved in handling such a choice variety 
of merchandise, Lydia may have been continuing a busi- 
ness of her husband, just as many widows to-day are doing 
with marked success. 

A woman in New York City—Mrs. Alice Foote Mc- 
Dougal—finding herself left with small sons to educate, 
bravely took up her husband’s prosperous business as an 
importer of coffee and has so enlarged it, by establishing 
artistic tearooms and salesrooms of goods from foreign 
markets, that her million-dollar success is nationally 
known. Another widow has chosen to continue the monu- 
mental-granite work of her husband. In fact, there seems 
to be no limit to the variety of tasks widows are under- 
taking to-day, whether it be governing a State, like Mrs. 
Nellie Ross in Wyoming, or representing a congressional 
district at Washington, as several have attempted to do. 

What about her religious life?—Even before that event- 
ful service conducted by Paul on the river bank at 
Philippi, which yielded the first recorded convert in Europe 
to Christ’s way of life—and that one a woman—Lydia was 
a proselyte to the Hebrew faith—“one that worshiped 
God.” She had not allowed business to crowd out her 
religion. Like Theodore Roosevelt, a more active man 
than whom it would be hard to discover in history, she 
probably would have affirmed, “No matter where I am or 


32 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


what activities or fatigues may be pressing upon me, I 
make it my habit to worship God somewhere every Sun- 
day.” 

Notice the significant result that followed Lydia’s 
habitual attention to God’s claim upon her time. He 
opened her heart “to give heed unto the things which were 
spoken by Paul.” What mighty rivers of influence have 
flowed through all Europe from this small spring! The 
great things of God often have slight beginnings. 

The rite of baptism to which she willingly submitted 
gave her fellowship with the company of believers. What 
do you think of women who say that they “can be Chris- 
tians without joining the church”; that they prefer not to 
be hampered by exactions they are sure they cannot fulfill; 
that they have certain little pet indulgences they will 
not give up for any institution? 

What was the result upon her family of Lydia’s con- 
version? Have you known young women who have led 
their whole family to Christ? A telephone supervisor who 
found in the church the one power able to drown the in- 
cessant “Number, please” that she heard all day long 
interpreted so successfully to her family the attractiveness 
of the church program that she led three sisters, two aunts, 
and, best of all, her mother and father to open their hearts 
to her God. Similarly a wealthy young widow, who found 
herself appalled by the responsibility of rearing two small 
children without a church home, was induced to taste of 
the feast she had long neglected ; took a class in the church 
school, and became so ardent a Christian that she led her 
sisters and their families—fourteen in all—to follow in 
her train. 

What about this first-century business woman’s home ?— 
Clearly Lydia’s home was one to which she was not 
ashamed to invite the most distinguished guests. Her 
only uneasiness was on the ground of her own unworthi- 
ness to receive such godly visitors as the apostolic party. 
“Tf ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come 
into my house, and abide there,” she said. There was a 
pressing insistence, a heartiness, about her desire, to enter- 
tain them; for she “constrained” them to come, not to tea 
only, not just to dinner, but to make her home their 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 33 


headquarters while in Philippi. Have you ever enter- 
tained your pastor’s family? Why not? Home too 
crowded? too humble? Or because you are too busy? 
Home hospitality has gone out of date in many cities, 
where apartment life cramps old-fashioned customs; yet 
this virtue is much commended by Paul, who says that 
those who are given to hospitality often find themselves 
entertaining “angels unawares.” 

For a good description of humble rural hospitality ex- 
tended to a minister read that chapter in Dorothy Car- 
men’s Faith of Our Fathers, where Hugh Blue is first 
entertained at dinner in his new parish. For a real under- 
standing of what the open door of a home can mean to a 
traveler through the wilderness, whether real or imaginary, 
turn to Francis Asbury’s Journal and imagine what it 
must have been like for this wanderer through swampy bogs, 
infested with hostile Indians, to find entertainment in a 
comfortable frontier cabin or, after jogging many miles, 
to come to “Mrs. Merritt’s meeting house,’ where three 
hundred people were gathered to greet him. 


Prisca: MAKER oF TENTS 


What about Prisca as a business woman ?—Tent making 
seems a mannish occupation for even a twentieth-century 
woman, yet one of the most efficient salespersons in a 
prominent motor-camping equipment establishment in New 
York City is the wife of one of the firm. So it may have 
been with Prisca, wife of Aquila, a Jew who had gone 
from Pontus to Rome and then, following the banishment 
of Jews by Claudius, had located his little shop in the 
great, cosmopolitan city of Corinth. Prisca, perhaps help- 
ing just a little at first with the making of the tents, be- 
came more proficient, as energetic women have a way of 
doing. By the time Paul reached them she was a fellow 
worker with her husband, just as in France to-day the 
wives of pastry-shop keepers and little grocers contribute 
their dowry money to the setting up of the establishment 
and then continue to tend the shop while their husbands 
are otherwise engaged. For reasons of economy the tent 
shop of Prisca and Aquila was probably in or close to their 
home. What a picture of wholesome Christian diligence 


34. NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


flashes upon our imagination from the words “because he 
[Paul] was of the same trade, he abode with them, and 
they wrought; for by their trade they were tentmakers.” 

What about her religious life?—Just as Paul’s manual 
labor, by which he earned his own livelihood, deterred him 
not a whit from devoting himself to religious work (for 
“he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and per- 
suaded Jews and Greeks’), so Prisca did not allow her 
toiling with tent cloth to crowd out active participation 
in the church life of Corinthian believers. In fact, she 
actually founded the profession of women directors of 
religious education when, with her husband, she took in 
hand the young and promising Apollos, who “taught ac- 
curately the things concerning Jesus” but knew only the 
baptism of John. With what infinite tact she must have 
offered her suggestions to the budding preacher, so deli- 
cately that he neither resented advice from a woman nor 
grew discouraged with his profession and abandoned it. 
The great successes that came to Apollos, so that at times 
he seemed to rival Paul in popular favor, are a tribute to 
his teacher as well as to his own abilities. Prisca was to 
Apollos as Anne Mansfield Sullivan was to blind Helen 
Keller, who said of her remarkable teacher that the most 
important day of her whole life was the one when her 
teacher came to set her spirit free. It was through her 
leadership that she was able to come up out of Egypt 
and stand before Sinai where a power divine touched her 
spirit and gave it sight, so that she was able to behold many 
wonders. Prisca to-day would be congenial in the com- 
pany of Maude Royden, the world’s most eminent woman 
preacher, who combines wonderfully a burning social sym- 
pathy with a deep personal mysticism. 

Another evidence of Prisca’s recognized interest in the 
infant church lies in the fact that her name is sometimes 
mentioned before her husband’s—rather an unusual order 
for Hebrews, who were accustomed to “Abraham and 
Sarah,” “Isaac and Rebekah.” She was at least a co- 
pastor with him, perhaps somewhat in the manner of a 
certain Baptist minister and his wife, who divide the min- 
isterial duties of. a Pennsylvania church, the husband 
preaching on Sundays at one service, and the wife at the 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 35 


other, both being graduates of Shurtleff College and of 
Rochester Theological Seminary; and of the Rev. Con- 
stance Coltman (B.D., Oxford), copastor with her hus- 
band of Crowley Church, Oxford, England. That Prisca 
remained an alert member of the colony of believers is 
indicated by the fact that her old friend Paul, in his 
second letter to Timothy, written so close to the end of 
his life, sent her an individual greeting: “Salute Prisca 
and Aquila.” The aged apostle had good reason to re- 
member the godly pair, who were really married souls, 
for by some circumstance whose details are unknown to 
us they had risked their own necks for his sake. 

What kind of home was maintained by Prisca ?— 
Prisca seems to have been one of those prudent wives whom 
the writer of Proverbs hails as “from Jehovah.” And 
her home certainly was one in which the religious atmos- 
phere was not only satisfactory to Paul but conducive to 
his successful evangelistic efforts—rather a high standard 
for any woman to meet. As in the home of Lydia and of 
John Mark’s mother it was one in which all the members 
of the family and working helpers were trying to imitate 
Christ; for when they later moved with Paul from Corinth 
to Ephesus, and the apostle was writing his famous letter 
to their friends in the throbbing, iniquitous city on the 
isthmus between the seas, he said, “Aquila and Prisca 
salute you much in the Lord, with the church that is in 
their house.’ A fascinating phrase this—‘“the church 
that is in their house”! The wife, a religious priestess in 
her own home—think of it! Is there one in yours? Was 
there when you were a child? 

Can a woman of to-day not parallel the twofold genius 
of Prisca in pursuing business and also maintaining a 
household distinguished for its religious tone even as did 
Roxana Beecher? This remarkable woman supplemented 
the meager salary of her husband—the Rev. Lyman 
Beecher—by teaching French, drawing, and English in a 
private school; yet she administered so successfully a 
household in which there were eight children, besides 
numerous relatives and visitors to the little Connecticut 
manse, that several of her sons becamé ministers of the 
gospel, including the inimitable Henry Ward Beecher; and 


36 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


her daughter Harriet was author of the book that not 
only helped stir America to one of the greatest, moral 
reforms of history but also revived the popularity of the 
Bible in France, because people wanted to read “the book 
that Uncle Tom loved.” 

No finer description of such a Christian household is to 
be found in literature than the chapter “The Church’ in 
Cecilia’s House” in Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean. 
Borrow a copy if you do not own one and read of the 
well-ordered, roomy villa entered by a little doorway in 
the garden wall; and of the singing of children—a new 
kind of singing, expressing not precisely mirth but won- 
derful happiness, the expansion of a joyful soul. Then 
feel the purity, the orderliness, the industry, the cheerful- 
ness of the house, suggesting a bride adorned for her hus- 
band. And sense the charm of the Roman matron herself, 
who advanced in long mantle and coif, with a temperate 
beauty like that of Greek statuary at its best, carrying one 
child and leading another by the hand. The whole atmos- 
phere breathed chastity. No finer literary statement can 
be found of the immaculateness of family life when hal- 
lowed by Christianity. 


Wuat Is tHE CoNcLUSION ? 


Both of the cases we have considered seem to indicate 
that it is possible for a woman to carry on a business 
career and maintain a successful home. But were not 
Lydia and Prisca of more than ordinary ability, and were 
the difficulties of the case not simpler under their organ- 
ization of society than they would be to-day? Is not the 
whole question altered when there are children in the 
family ? 

Helen Taft Manning manages to be dean of Bryn Mawr 
College as well as mother of robust young children. The 
following statement of a young woman who tried to con- 
tinue her business career and still fulfill her own high 
ideals of Christian wifehood and found it impossible ex- 
presses the negative conclusion: “I consider homemaking 
and business both too important for any young woman 
successfully to give herself to both at the same time.” 
Many women would not agree with this conclusion. The 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 37 


women members of a chamber of commerce recently broad- 
cast this statement: 

There are many women in their own businesses, doing un- 
usual things in the industrial and commercial fields. Among 
the members of our chamber of commerce there are a toy 
manufacturer, a neckwear manufacturer, opticians, Owners 
of small retail stores, a sales engineer, and countless others. 
Most of these women have their own homes, and several are 
mothers. In fact, it has been interesting to observe that most 
successful business women have their own homes, and there 
they find their recreation. 


In a debate at the London School of Economics the 
following viewpoints were expressed by Rebecca West, 
English author, and Alfred Duff-Cooper, member of Par- 
liament: Miss West believes that man has rather tired of 
politics and is eager to return to the tasks of home. 
Woman, on the other hand, through her rich experience 
gained in the rearing of her children, would make an 
ideal politician. Mr. Duff-Cooper feels that since the home 
is the only bulwark we can trust to safeguard the world 
against threatening influences it should not be deprived 
of the unifying center and heart of its presiding spirit— 
the wife and mother. 


QUESTIONS FoR Group Discussion 


1. What reasons have you heard advanced for the com- 
bination of the careers of home building and of business? 
Dislike for housework? Desire for car, property, travel, 
savings account, or more clothes than husband can afford 
to buy? 

2. What do you think of the argument that it is a pro- 
tection for some business girls to marry while young and 
be safeguarded by a home even if they have to continue at 
business rather than live in the average city boarding 
house ? 

3. If a young married woman feels obligated to assist 
her parents or younger brothers and sisters, is she justified 
in going into business life in order to do this without ask- 
ing her husband’s financial help? Is it right for a young 
woman with obligations of this sort to get married with 
the understanding that she will continue in business? 


58 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


4, Why does it seem more fitting for a wife to be eco- 
nomically dependent on her husband than for a man to 
be dependent on his wife? Is anything more than custom 
at the basis of this? 

5. Should a wife in business contribute to the household 
budget or be urged to lay aside her salary for a home or 
some other purpose? Is it unfair to a husband to de- 
prive him of the satisfaction of “being a good provider” ? 

6. Under such a regime should a husband be expected 
to assist in household duties? Was the girl being what 
Dr.. W. Fearon Halliday calls “a true woman” when she 
said: “I don’t mind going to business every day in the 
week but I simply will not mop up the kitchen. That’s 
up to Walter!” ? 

7. What are some of the moral perils that may arise 
from married women’s continuing in business? Over- 
fatigue, leading to incompatibility with husband, and un- 
fitness to see issues clearly? Marital loyalty challenged 
by daily association with men? 

8. Do you see any significance in the fact that in 1923 
there were more marriages in New York City than there 
had been for twenty-six years (66,430), while that same 
year recorded the smallest number of births for any year 
in that twenty-six-year period? Of the 1,115,670 mar- 
ried women in that city (excluding widows and divorcees) 
9.6 per cent are employed in gainful occupations. 21.1 
per cent of the total female population of the country, 
over ten years of age, were gainfully employed in 1920. 
What comments can you make on the following very im- 
portant facts stated by Mary Anderson in the 1925 Report 
of the Director of the Women’s Bureau of the Federal 
Department of Labor? 

Census figures show that the number of wage-earning women 
is gradually increasing, and that in 1920 there were more 
than eight and one-half million women in gainful employ- 
ment, one woman out of every five being a wage-earner. This 
number represents an actual increase since 1910 of nearly 
half a million. Such figures prove that the employment of 
women outside ‘the home is not a temporary condition but a 
problem that we have with us always. Not far from three 


million, or one third of all the women workers, were in man- 
ufacturing and mechanical industries, trade, transportation, 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 39 


and public service. ... Perhaps it is not generally realized 
that one in every five working women is less than twenty 
years old, and that more than one in every five is from twenty 
to twenty-five years of age. In fact, at least two fifths of 
the women who work are under twenty-five years old. An- 
other two fifths are from twenty-five to forty-four years of 
age. Or, to state this another way, nearly one half of the 
women in manufacturing industries, practically two fifths of 
those in agricultural jobs, in trades, and in professions, and 
two thirds in transportation are less than twenty-five years 
old. 


9. Judging from cases that have come under your own 
observation, do you think it possible to do justice to chil- 
dren and engage regularly in business, whether it be to 
go out as a laundress and leave the children to street perils 
and cold lunches; or to go to Wall Street and leave them 
in charge of a maid? 

10. What do you observe to be the effect upon the reli- 
gious atmosphere of the home when the wife goes to busi- 
ness? Do “the business couples” you know take an active 
part in church activities or do they sleep and do their 
housework on Sundays? Ought a girl who marries a 
Sunday worker surrender her own church habits for his 
convenience ? 

11. What customs may be inaugurated in a home where 
husband and wife are in business life to offset the care- 
lessness in religious matters forced upon them often by 
the rush of their daily schedule? Would brief daily wor- 
ship together help? Is this possible in households where 
breakfast must be rushed through, house tidied, dinner 
planned, commuters’ train caught, and time clock punched 
by nine o’clock? How do you appraise the business girl 
who gets up at six, starts the whole family at its daily 
routine, cares for the breakfast, and finds time to read the 
Bible chapter her discussion group at the church have 
agreed to follow together on that day? 


CHAPTER III 


MY TWIG ON THE FAMILY TREE—WHAT OF ITS 
FRUIT? 


“AREN'T you just thrilled to think what wonderful 
ancestors we have?” a young girl asked her sister one day. 
“Why, mother’s family tree has been traced back to Wil- 
liam the Conqueror, and we have at least two ancestors on 
father’s side who came over in the Mayflower.” 

“Yes,” rejoined her sister, “but I read just the other day 
of a woman who is said to have five Mayflower forebears. 
She has been sentenced to prison for indiscreet utterances. 
I’m not so much interested in my ancestors as I am 
frightened to think what sort of ancestor I may become.” 

This puts the whole matter of our responsibility to 
posterity in a nutshell. It is far less important for us to 
determine what hung on the old original branches of the 
family tree than to see to it that our own twigs shall be 
so pruned and sprayed that when their fruit-bearing sea- 
son comes they shall display only perfect specimens, with- 
out scar or blemish. 

The Bible has given us several fascinating chronicles of 
mothers and children. In these we may observe the forces 
of heredity and environment at work. Let us put some 
of these situations under our microscope and consider them 
with a view to shunning or duplicating their patterns m 
our own lives. 


HERODIAS AND SALOME 
Mark 6. 17-28. 


For Herod himself had sent forth and laid hold upon John, 
and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother 
Philip’s wife; for he had married her. For John said unto 
Herod, It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife. 
And Herodias set herself against him, and desired to kill him; 
and she could not; for Herod feared John, knowing that he 
was a righteous and holy man, and kept him safe. And when 
he heard him, he was much perplexed; and he heard him 
gladly. And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on 


40 


NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 41 


his birthday made a supper to his lords, and the high cap- 
tains, and the chief men of Galilee; and when the daughter 
of Herodias herself came in and danced, she pleased Herod 
and them that sat at meat with him; and the king said unto 
the damsel, Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give 
it thee. And he sware unto her, Whatsoever thou shalt ask of 
me, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom. And 
she went out, and said unto her mother, What shall I ask? 
And she said, The head’ of John the Baptizer. And she came 
in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked, saying, 
I will that thou forthwith give me on a platter the head of 
John the Baptist. And the king was exceedingly sorry; but 
for the sake of his oaths, and of ‘them that sat at meat, he 
would not reject her. And straightway the king sent forth a 
soldier of the guard, and commanded to bring his head: and 
he went and beheaded him in the prison and brought his 
head on a platter, and gave it to the damsel; and the damsel 
gave it to her mother. 


ELISABETH : MoTHER OF A PROPHET 


Luke 1. 5-14. 

There was in the days of Herod, king of Judea, a certain 
priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abijah: and he had 
a wife of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. 
And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the 
commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. And 
they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they 
both were now well stricken in years. 

Now it came to pass, while he executed the priest’s office 
before God in the order of his course, according to the custom 
of the priest’s office, his lot was to enter into the temple of 
the Lord and burn incense. And the whole multitude of the 
people were praying without at the hour of incense. And 
there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the 
right side of the altar of incense. And Zacharias was troubled 
when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said 
unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: because thy supplication is 
heard, and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou 
shalt call his name John. And thou shalt have joy and glad- 
ness; and many shall rejoice at his birth. 


Mary, Motruer or Our SAVIOUR 


Luke 1. 46-55. 
And Mary said, 
My soul doth magnify the Lord, 
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. 
For he hath looked upon the low estate of his handmaid: 
For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me 
blessed. 


42 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; 

And holy is his name. 

And his mercy is unto generations and generations 

On them that fear him. 

He hath showed strength with his arm; 

He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their 
heart. 

He hath put down princes from their thrones, 

And hath exalted them of low degree. 

The hungry he hath filled with good things; 

And the rich he hath sent empty away. 

He hath given help to Israel his servant, 

That he might remember mercy 

(As he spake unto our fathers) 

Toward Abraham and his seed for ever. 


Eunicr, MorHer or A MISSIONARY 


2 Timothy 1. 1-6. 

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, 
according to the promise of the life which is in Christ Jesus, 
to Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, peace, from God 
the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. 

I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers in a pure 
conscience, how unceasingly is my remembrance of thee in 
my supplications, night and day longing to see thee, remem- 
bering thy tears, that I may be filled with joy; having been 
reminded of the unfeigned faith that is in thee; which dwelt 
first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and, 
I am persuaded, in thee also. For which cause I put thee in 
remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in 
thee through the laying on of my hands. 


Tur ImmortTALIty oF UNwortHy MotTrHrrHoop 


The mothers of the Wesleys, the Beechers, the Alcott 
sisters; the little Serbian mother of Michael Pupin; 
Scottish Margaret Morrison Carnegie; and Sir James M. 
Barrie’s Margaret Ogilvie, of whom he wrote so tenderly, 
are all remembered for their beneficent influence. But 
Herodias, mother of impassioned young Salome, won a 
shameful sort of immortality by reason of her own distor- 
tion of life’s most beautiful relationship. The words of 
the prophet Ezekiel are a fitting caption for her story: 
“As is the mother, so is her daughter. Thou art the 
daughter of thy mother.” 

How much responsibility had Herodias?—To what ex- 
tent was she to blame for the murderous crime of Salome? 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 43 


Consider the gradual steps she took toward her final abso- 
lute degradation: her initial crime of sensuality in marry- 
ing her first husband’s brother, who was also her own 
uncle—Herod; her initiation of the motive to murder 
John, whose righteous criticism she feared as much as 
Mary Queen of Scots feared the scorching blasts of John 
Knox; her unscrupulousness as a mother in sending a 
young daughter to dance before the half-tipsy revelers 
at Herod’s birthday party and in coaching her lips to 
ask for lifeblood. Only on the pages of certain types of 
modern fiction can such a shameful picture of cold dis- 
regard for all standards of decency, for all responsibili- 
ties of motherhood, be found. Can the harshness of the 
picture be softened somewhat by her enduring loyalty to 
Herod, whom, exiled upon the failure of the plot she 
instigated to make him king, she chose to accompany to 
Gaul, although the emperor Caligula, out of respect to her 
noble birth, gave her the opportunity of remaining behind ? 
Consider the somewhat similar instances of Empress 
Josephine, who longed to follow Napoleon to his island 
exile; and former Empress Zita of Austria, who accom- 
panied Emperor Carl to his banishment in Switzerland. 

The Herodias-John-Herod triangle bears interesting 
comparison with the Jezebel-Klijah-Ahab, the Queen Ger- 
trude-Hamlet-King-of-Denmark and the Lady Macbeth- 
Duncan-Macbeth situations. Not only may Herod and 
Macbeth be compared in the interesting operation of their 
conscience but Herodias and Lady Macbeth also. Both 
wives were motivated by “vaulting ambition which o’er- 
leaps itself and falls on t’other”—ambition not for them- 
selves, primarily, but for their husbands. The hesitating 
conscience of Herod (“he was much perplexed”; “and 
the king was exceeding sorry”) is close akin to Macbeth’s 
when, feeling scruples against murdering the gentle King 
Duncan, he says, 

“If we should fail?” 


and Lady Macbeth replies: 


“We fail! 
But screw your courage to the sticking place, 
And we'll not fail’; 


44 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


and again: 
“Infirm of purpose! 
Give me the daggers.” 


Contrast these wives—Jezebel, Herodias, Lady Macbeth, 
and Queen Gertrude—ambitious for blood, with the mar- 
tyred Edith Cavell, whose immortality rests not upon crime 
but upon her sacrificial service. Contrast the atmosphere 
of Lady Macbeth’s statue at Stratford-on-Avon with the 
message of Edith Cavell’s monument in London, speaking 
to the restless throngs whirling about Trafalgar Square, 
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down 
his life for his friends.” 

How much responsibility had Salome ?—Some Bible stu- 
dents believe that Salome was already married at the time 
of the incident and therefore was not a naive damsel but a 
fellow conspirator, whose modesty had already been the 
victim of licentious court practices. Others, however, 
believe that she was an exotic young Jewish beauty, forced 
into the company of the riotous “lords, . . . high cap- 
tains, and the chief men of Galilee” by a designing mother ; 
that she was too young to realize the degradation of her 
dance under the shameful circumstances and not to be 
blamed for the murderous request superimposed upon 
her. This is the picture given us of Salome by the artist 
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her age has much 
to do with the question “Could she have refused to obey 
her mother’s command ?” 

Would it be possible for anyone with such an evil 
heredity and such an immoral environment to resist the 
crushing affront of evil suggestions? Salome’s case was 
particularly hopeless because her heredity and environment 
were both unfavorable. It is not difficult to trace the 
cropping out of inherited traits in her subsequent life. 
The evil that she received and acquired she adapted to her 
own ends; for, true to her family’s traditions, she married 
her uncle—Philip. 


Guap MotrueErs oF WISE Sons 


But let us not close our hasty consideration of mothers’ 
responsibility for the moral and physical quality of their 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 45 


offspring without refreshing our minds with glimpses 
of a few mothers whose worthy traits found reexpression 
in posterity. 

Mothers who have blessed the world—In delightful 
contrast to Herodias is Mary of Nazareth, mother of the 
Saviour, so quaintly pictured in the old German carol as 
the “rose that bloomed at midnight,” whose poetic and 
lofty outpouring of devotion to God in her Magnificat was 
echoed time and again in the words of her Son. “M 
spirit hath rejoiced in God: my Saviour,” sang the mother; 
and the Son echoed an entreaty to his disciples to abide 
in the Father’s commandments, that his own joy might 
be in them and their joy be made full. In Mary’s 
humility she marveled at God’s consideration of “the low 
estate of his handmaid”; and down the years her Son 
echoed, “Whosoever would become great among you shall 
be your minister; and whosoever would be first among you 
shall be your servant.” 

And think you not that the flaming passion for right- 
eousness on the part of the wilderness reformer—John— 
found its original in Elisabeth, of whom, as well as of her 
husband Zacharias, Scripture records, “And they were 
both righteous before God, walking in all the command- 
ments and ordinances of the Lord blameless” ? 

And what more gracious picture of motherhood can be 
found than that of Mary, mother of the young Evangelist 
John Mark, whose spacious home was so saturated with 
the spirit of prayer that even her maid—Rhoda—was 
called in for family worship together with the coterie of 
believers? The apostle Peter turned first to its hospitable 
doors upon his release from prison. 

Even Salome, wife of Zebedee, in spite of the fact that 
she made the mistake of coming to Jesus worshiping and 
asking, is ennobled by the very nature of her request for 
her boys—James and John. If she made the selfish 
error of mingling requests for personal favors with wor- 
ship she may be partially exonerated, for hers was the 
loftiest ambition ever voiced by motherhood: to have her 
sons in the intimate fellowship of Jesus. Moreover, their 
hastily uttered assent to Christ’s searching question, “Are 
ye able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” took 


46 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


on a meaning through the years of which they little 
dreamed when they lightly answered, “We are able.’ For 
Salome was still in the company of the faithful at the dark 
moment when the shadow of the cross fell upon Calvary ; 
and in the resurrection garden with the Marys. James 
demonstrated his “We are able” by dying a martyr under 
Herod’s grip; and John received from Christ, if not the 
position of honor in the Kingdom, at least the place of 
honor at the Last Supper, leaning on Christ and receiving 
from him the essence of those truths he so inspiredly set 
down for us in his visions of Patmos. 

The brief portrait of Eunice, whom Paul commends, to- 
gether with her mother Lois, for handing on to his young 
favorite—Timothy—“the unfeigned faith” that dwelt in 
them, makes us wish that the author of the charming 
letters to his son in the gospel had dwelt at greater length 
upon these noble women. Paul was rather parsimonious 
with his compliments for members of the opposite sex; 
but here were two who seem to have fulfilled his ideal of 
love as described in the thirteenth chapter of First Corin- 
thians. 

Mothers and the world’s destiny—When Mrs. Mary 
Elizabeth Haldane died at the age of one hundred years, 
just forty days after publishing her memoirs—A Century 
Worth Inving—the press of the world paid tribute to 
“Scotland’s Grand Old Woman.” But there was more 
reason for praising her than the publication of a book at 
such a ripe age. She was one of the greatest mothers 
of history if we measure her by the galaxy of distinguished 
sons and daughters whose records appear in Who’s Who. 
Her own zeal for scholarship was duplicated in the lives 
of Viscount Haldane, twice Lord High Chancellor of 
Britain and biographer of Adam Smith; Professor John 
Scott Haldane of Oxford; Elizabeth Haldane, LL.D., first 
woman Justice of Scotland; and Sir William Haldane, 
Crown Agent for Scotland and Prison Commissioner. 

Benjamin Kidd, in his significant book The Science of 
Power, has a notable chapter on “Woman, the Psychic 
Center in the Social Integration.” In it he maintains that 
the future of civilization lies not so much with the fighting 
males of the race as with woman, who, by her very nature, 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 47 


has learned to subordinate short-range purposes to great 
principles lying in the future. Woman has been exploited 
by various systems of power, but from that exploitation her 
mind has emerged as the actual prototype of the basic 
systems of religion, morality, and law upon which civil- 
ization rests. It will be well for civilization to remember 
that the group that organizes itself around woman’s power 
to consider the race more important than the individual, 
and to make infinite sacrifice for far-distant goals, under 
the stimulus of the emotion of the ideal, will have tre- 
mendous advantage over other sectors of humanity. If 
it is true that a nation can impress upon its people any 
ideal it deliberately sets out to realize, surely woman, 
through her physical bequests and through her intimate 
influence upon childhood, is the very center of that cul- 
tivation. 


Wuat Is tHr Concuusion ? 


How shall we prepare ourselves fittingly to discharge our 
obligation to society in a posterity that shall bless the 
world? How can we overcome unfavorable factors of 
heredity and environment if such there be? Much, doubt- 
less, we may do. 

Help from the colleges.—Several of the American col- 
leges have established departments whose purpose is de- 
liberately to improve the quality of fruit on the family 
tree. Smith College opened in 1925, under the direction 
of Dr. Ethel Puffer Howes, the Institute for the Coordina- 
tion of Women’s Interests, which aims not only to educate 
the college woman for parenthood but also to consider 
practical methods by which the educated married woman 
ean unify her home and outside interests. A cooperative 
nursery, in which mothers will take turns in caring for 
a whole group of children, will be a feature of the social 
laboratory of this institute. The University of Chicago 
has already in operation a cooperative nursery. Vassar 
College has a Department of Euthenics, which is so new 
that alumne are having difficulty in learning what it is 
all about. Under the direction of Miss Annie L. Mac- 
Leod students are considering the “science pertaining to 
the production of fine offspring in the human race,” “the 


48 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


science which deals with the unborn or native qualifications 
of a race.” ‘Twenty-one students this year (1926) are 
majoring in this work by combining economics courses in 
labor problems, the family, and charities and corrections 
with courses in physiological psychology, geography, and 
heredity. Although dealing in detail with problems of 
environment the new science of euthenics, with its 
emphasis upon efficient living, is an important part of the 
larger science of eugenics, which has to do with the crea- 
tion of well-born offspring. 

The following poem by William Woodford Rock is a 
helpful and stimulating statement of what our attitude 
should be toward the difficult matter of heredity: 


*T am the legatee of fierce desires. 
A strange bequest of sundry hopes and fears, 
Loves, hates, and hidden smoldering fires, 
Has come to me unsought far down the years 
From those whose name I bear; themselves the heirs 
Of time, and race, through every bygone age 
Of man. And I am not myself, but theirs 
Who so devised this jumbled heritage. 


“Yet I thank God, and thank him with a song, 
That he gave me a will that is my own, 

And made me free to choose the right or wrong, 
And fight and fashion life as I shall choose. 

And with this gift I sigh for no man’s shoes 
Nor envy any king upon his throne. 

So fare I forth intent at last to be 
Master, not slave, of my strange legacy.’* 


QUESTIONS FOR Group DiscussION 


1. Are modern mothers who force their daughters to go 
on the stage or train for cabaret dancing comparable to 
Herodias? How about mothers whose sole aim is to 
“marry off” their daughters comfortably so that both may 
enjoy the material comforts of such an arrangement? 
What can you do to ennoble their attitude toward life and 
each other? 

2. In the realms of art, literature, and life how many 
pairs of noble mothers and daughters can you recall such 
as are depicted in the portrait of “Madame Lebrun and 


1‘*Heredity”; copyright, Christian Century; used by permission. 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 49 


Her Daughter”; and in the life of the poets Grace Hazard 
Conkling and her little daughter Hilda; of Catherine 
Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Madame 
Curie and her scientific daughter Irene; and in the musi- 
cal careers of Louise Homer and her daughter Louise 
Homer Stires? 

3. What are some preventable causes of prodigal 
daughters? unsympathetic mothers? too lax home re- 
straints? failure to impart needful knowledge? monopoly 
of daughters’ wages by parents? salacious books and maga- 
zines? movies that lead suggestible girls to imitate what 
they see enacted ? 

4. Comment on the statement of Mrs. Mary Hamilton 
(author of The Policewoman: Her Service and Ideals) : 
“To cure is the voice of the past; to prevent, the divine 
whisper of to-day.” Do you agree with her that “danger 
does not exist for the woman or girl who does right and 
tends to her own business; a woman can go about New 
York at any hour without being exposed to insult or real 
bodily peril provided she shows by her own conduct that 
she is not interested in anything but her own affairs”? 
If this is true, why has the Association to Provide Proper 
Housing for Girls inaugurated a movement to keep girls 
away from the large cities? 

5. Have you ever taken an inventory of yourself and 
jotted down the desirable traits you would like to accen- 
tuate in your character and the ignoble ones at whose eradi- 
cation you should work, just as Burbank worked to 
eliminate the thorn from the rose, sharp seeds from berries, 
tartness from grapes? Ask yourself such frank questions 
as these applied to freshmen by personnel research bureaus 
of certain colleges: Do I get grouchy without cause? Do 
I find it difficult to make up my mind about things? Do 
I worry about nonessentials? Do certain people get on 
my nerves? Do I ever imagine someone is following me? 
Do I find it hard to stick to a job until finished? Do I 
have trouble in repressing evil thoughts as soon as they 
occur to me? Do I find it difficult to be agreeable to 
strangers? Do I ever feel tempted to take that which 
is not my own? 

6. Statistics indicate that Harvard alumni, twenty 


50 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


years after graduation, have an average of one and three 
quarters children. In your opinion would eugenists do 
better to abandon their campaign against propagation of 
the unfit and encourage larger families among those who 
should be rearing the leaders of the future? The size of 
the average American family has decreased twelve per cent 
since 1890. 

?. Do you think prodigies can be selected by science, 
as a professor of a Western university claims, who has 
picked one thousand California children from whom “a — 
full fruitage” is expected and has started a drive for five 
million dollars for their education? Do “hothouse” 
methods of culture always guarantee perfect specimens of 
character and leadership? How can Lincoln and Shake- 
speare be explained on such a basis? 


CHAPTER IV 


CONTACTS WITHIN MY HOME—ARE THEY 
CHRISTIAN? 


Frew of us have the power of swaying crowds as does 
Lady Astor, thrilling throngs of English voters with her 
charming eloquence; or as Maude Royden, preaching the 
social gospel with the soul of a mystic; or as Maria 
Jeritza, bewitching thousands with her golden gift of 
song; or as Margaret Bonfield, stirring crowds of British 
workers with her ideals for a renovated society. Yet all 
of us in our own homes are centers of little worlds whose 
spirit and problems are miniatures of those of the great 
universe without. From all of us electrons of influence 
are constantly flowing, affecting brothers, sisters, parents, 
children, elderly relatives, servants, tradespeople, for good 
or for evil. Our greatest chance for exerting vital Chris- 
tian influence lies not in Borneo nor unprivileged Siam 
but in the little world of the near-at-hand; for as the 
ancient philosopher Laotsze said, ““I'o be is to be in rela- 
tions.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning has given poetic 
form to this same idea: 

“Each creature holds an insular point in space; 
Yet what man stirs a finger, breathes a sound, 
But all the multitudinous beings round 
In all the countless worlds with time and place 
For their conditions, down to the central base, 
Thrill, haply, in vibration and rebound, 


Life answering life across the vast profound, 
In full antiphony by a common grace?” 


FamIty PATTERNS 


Many interesting attempts have been made to define 
the human family. Someone has called it “an antagonistic 
cooperation.” Dr. E. W. Burgess, of the University of 
Wisconsin, recently discussed it before the American Socio- 
logical Society as “a unity of interacting personalities,” 


51 


52 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


a sort of superpersonality made up of different and often 
conflicting patterns of ideals inherited from parents’ 
families. A popular song has made bold to add its defi- 
nition : 

“They say a family is an institution, 

But who wants to live in an institution?” 


Many people feel that the modern home as well as the 
modern marriage relation is in a chaotic condition. Dr. 
Charles Ellwood claims that “the American home is the 
very citadel of paganism.” But he hastens to add, “It 
is also the citadel of Christianity.” 

When we realize how many patterns of ideals are blended 
in the average family, the husband expecting his wife to 
follow his image of his own mother, and the wife measur- 
ing her husband by the image of her own father, it is 
amazing that it is as successful and going a concern as 
it is. 

But even better than the best inherited patterns of char- 
acter and custom is the design of Christ and his disciples. 
Have you ever examined the various contacts within your 
own home to see whether they are in harmony with his 
intention? Are they a spiritual, as well as a natural kin- 
ship, such as Jesus had in mind when he said, ‘“Whosoever 
shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and 
sister, and mother”? 

Let us be bold enough to take as the background of our 
discussion some of the most misunderstood and misinter- 
preted passages of the New Testament; the advices of 
Paul concerning the conduct of women (wives, widows, 
and virgins); the relations of parents and children, of 
youth and age, of masters and servants. Many of these 
maxims may cause us to question their point of view, but 
as we consider them let us in fairness to Paul remember 
that were he addressing twentieth-century student bodies 
or groups of Quota Club business women, instead of ad- 
monishing first-century extremists and petulant Tryphenas, 
he undoubtedly would rephrase his recommendations in 
recognition of Christianity’s present appraisal of woman- 
hood. For there was probably no man alive in 49 a. p. 
who was better informed on the newest modes of thought 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 53 


than Paul of Tarsus, citizen of the world. Some of his 
rules possibly he would to-day abandon utterly; but many 
of them, considered not as fragmentary utterances quoted 
outside their setting but as portions of a seasoned and 
inspired outlook upon life as a whole, he would wisely 
retain as applicable to present situations. 


ApvicEs TO WoMEN 


Her relation to her husband.— 


1 Corinthians 7. 1-3, 7-9. 


Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote: It is good 
for a man not to touch a woman. But, because of fornications, 
let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her 
own husband. Let the husband render unto the wife her due: 
and likewise also the wife unto the husband. ... Yet I would 
that all men were even as I myself. Howbeit each man hath 
his own gift from God, one after this manner, and another 
after that. 

But I say to the unmarried and to widows, It is good for 
them if they abide even as I. But if they have not continency, 
let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn. 


1 Corinthians 11. 3-12. 


But I would have you know, that the head of every man is 
Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head 
of Christ is God. Every man praying or prophesying, having 
his head covered, dishonoreth his head. But every woman 
praying or prophesying with her head unveiled dishonoreth 
her head; for it is one and the same thing as if she were 
shaven. For if a woman is not veiled, let her also be shorn: 
but if it is a shame to a woman to be shorn or shaven, let 
her be veiled. For a man indeed ought not to have his head 
veiled, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but 
the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of 
the woman; but the woman of the man: for neither was the 
man created for the woman; but the woman for the man: for 
this cause ought the woman to have a sign of authority on 
her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, neither is the 
woman without the man, nor the man without the woman, in 
the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, so is the man 
also by the woman; but all things are of God. 


Ephesians 5. 22-33. 

Wives, be in subjection unto your own husbands, as unto 
the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ 
also is the head of the church, being himself the saviour of 
the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so Jet the 
wives also be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, 


54 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and 
gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having 
cleansed it by the washing of water with the word, that he 
might present the church to himself a glorious church, not 
having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should 
be holy and without blemish. Even so ought husbands also 
to love their own wives as their own bodies. He that loveth 
his own wife loveth himself: for no man ever hated his own 
fiesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ also 
the church; because we are members of his body. For this 
cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall 
cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. This 
mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the 
church. Nevertheless do ye also severally love each one his 
own wife even as himself; and let the wife see that she fear 
her husband. 


Her relation to her children.— 


1 Timothy 2. 15. 
She shall be saved through her childbearing, if they con- 
tinue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety. 


Titus 2. 3-5. 

That aged women likewise be reverent in demeanor, not 
slanderers nor enslaved to much wine, teachers of that which 
is good; that they may train the young women to love their 
husbands, to love their children, to de sober-minded, chaste, 
workers at home, kind, being in subjection to their own hus- 
bands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. 


Religion in the home.— 


1 Corinthians 7. 12b-14. 

If any brother hath an unbelieving wife, and she is con- 
tent to dwell with him, let him not leave her. And the woman 
that hath an unbelieving husband, and he is content to dwell 
with her, let her not leave her husband. For the unbelieving 
husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is 
sanctified in the brother: else were your children unclean; 
but now are they holy. 


1 Timothy 3. 11. 
Women in like manner must be grave, not slanderers, tem- 
perate, faithful in all things. 


Dress and demeanor.— 


1 Timothy 2. 9, 10. 
In like manner, that women adorn themselves in modest 
apparel, with shamefastness and sobriety; not with braided 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 55 


hair, and gold or pearls or costly raiment; but (which becom- 
eth women professing godliness) through good works. 


RELATION OF PARENTS TO CHILDREN 


2 Corinthians 12. 14. 


Behold, this is the third time I am ready to come to you; 
and I will not be a burden to you: for I seek not yours, but 
you: for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but 
the parents for the children. 


1 Timothy 3. 4, 5. 

One that ruleth well his own house, having kis children in 
subjection with all gravity; (but if a man knoweth not how 
to Ae his own house, how shall he take care of the church 
of God?) 


Ephesians 6. 1-4. 

Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 
Honor thy father and mother (which is the first command- 
ment with promise), that it may be well with thee, and thou 
mayest live long on the earth. And, ye fathers, provoke not 
your children to wrath: but nurture them in the chastening 
and admonition of the Lord. 


RELATION OF SERVANT TO MASTERS 


Philemon 10, 11, 16-19. 


I beseech thee for my child, whom I have begotten in my 
bonds, Onesimus, who once was unprofitable to thee, but now 
is profitable to thee and to me: ... no longer as a servant, 
but more than a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, 
but how much rather to thee, both in the flesh and in the 
Lord. If then thou countest me a partner, receive him as 
myself. But if he hath wronged thee at all, or oweth thee 
aught, put that to mine account; I Paul write it with mine 
own hand, I will repay it: that I say not unto thee that thou 
owest to me even thine own self besides. 


Ephesians 6. 5-9. 

Servants, be obedient unto them that according to the flesh 
are your masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of 
your heart, as unto Christ; not in the way of eyeservice, as 
menpleasers; but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God 
from the heart; with good will doing service, as unto the 
Lord, and not unto men: knowing that whatsoever good thing 
each one doeth, the same shall he receive again from the 
Lord, whether he be bond or free. And, ye masters, do the 
same things unto them, and forbear threatening: knowing 
that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and 
there is no respect of persons with him. 


56 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


1 Timothy 6. 1, 2. 


Let as many as are servants under the yoke count their 
own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and 
the doctrine be not blasphemed. And they that have believing 
masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren; 
but let them serve them the rather, because they that partake 
of the benefit are believing and beloved. These things teach 
and exhort. 


Pavuu’s IpEAS oF A WIFE'S RELATION TO Her Huspanp 


Charles E. Jefferson, in his scholarly work on The Char- 
acter of Paul, frankly expects the apostle’s drastic rules 
for women to be boldly criticized. To us they may seem 
as arbitrary and ex cathedra as the blasts of John Knox 
blown against Mary Queen of Scots and the women of 
her day. Maude Royden finds them all the more intoler- 
able because, more than the utterances of any other New 
Testament author, they determined the attitude of the 
early church toward her sex. But let us not forget that, 
“Gntellectual” though the apostle was, able to meet the 
foremost Athenian philosophers of his age on their own 
ground, he was also a great lover, constantly craving the 
companionship of his fellow believers. He was ever send- 
ing them affectionate letters of greeting or counsel; plead- 
ing now with Timothy to join him in Rome; again com- 
mending Luke for remaining his faithful companion or 
thanking God for such friends as Prisca and Aquila, who 
risked their very necks for his sake. 

How else could he have written the thirteenth chapter 
of First Corinthians? Surely in the background of his 
mind there must have been concrete personalities who 
inspired the strokes as he painted that superb portrait of 
Love, just as George Frederick Watts used human models 
when he struck off his paintings of “Hope,” “Mammon,” 
and other abstract themes. The Flemish master Rubens 
is said to have used his young wife as model for Venus or 
Madonna. Perhaps it was the memory of Paul’s virtuous 
Hebrew mother, whose name is not even mentioned in 
Scripture, or the composite memory of many virtuous 
women which dictated, “Love vaunteth not itself, is not 
puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not 
its own, is not provoked, . . .  beareth all things, be- 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 57 


lieveth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” 
Substitute the word “‘mother” for “love” the next time 
you read this chapter and see how perfectly it describes 
her. 

Paul’s own growth in Christian understanding.—In 
considering the foregoing passages of Scripture let us 
recognize that Paul’s early attitude toward marriage as re- 
flected in the first Corinthian letter (chapter 7) is very 
different from his spiritualized conception stated in 
Ephesians 5. 22-33. Look first of all, however, at the Saul 
of preconversion days, when he was vigorously persecuting 
the infant church in Jerusalem, breathing threatening and 
slaughter against our Lord’s disciples. Entering into their 
homes, he dragged women, as well as men, off to prison 
(Acts 8. 3); and when he went to the high priest asking 
for letters to the synagogue in Damascus, his purpose was 
to bring “any that were of the Way, whether men or 
women, . . . bound to Jerusalem” (Acts 9. 2). In 
other words, the ardent young Jewish reformer showed 
women no consideration because of their sex. So it is not 
surprising to note that when he was writing as a Chris- 
tian leader in Corinth, his attitude toward marriage was 
at least unsympathetic (1 Corinthians 7). Those who 
are inclined toward matrimony he does not condemn, but 
he adds, “Yet I would that all men were even as I myself.” 
And to the unmarried and widowed he says, “It is good 
for them if they abide even as I.” “She is happier if she 
abide as she is, after my judgment: and I think that I 
also have the spirit of God.” 

Two reasons he gives for discouraging marriage. First, 
he feels that the second coming of Christ is imminent and 
will dissolve marital relations anyhow. “If a virgin 
marry,” he writes, “she hath not sinned. Yet such shall 
have tribulation in the flesh: and I would spare you... . 
The time is shortened, . . . for the fashion of this 
world passeth away” (1 Corinthians 7%. 28-31). 
Secondly, he discourages matrimony because he would have 
his friends free to serve and exemplify Christ’s ministry. 
“The woman that is unmarried and the virgin is careful 
for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in 
body and in spirit: but she that is married is careful for 


58 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


the things of the world, how she may please her husband” 
(1 Corinthians 7. 34). 

It is Paul’s statement about man’s being the head of 
the woman (1 Corinthians 11. 3) and woman’s being 
“the glory of the man” (1 Corinthians 11. 7) which has 
been the storm center of rebellion and disagreement; but 
it is easily possible for us to keep our balance even here 
when we recall the attendant circumstances. In his effort 
to emphasize the truth that through faith (as contrasted 
with the tutorship of the old law) all people may become 
the children of God, Paul had made the sweeping state- 
ment that in Christ all distinctions of race, social caste, 
and even of sex are done away with. “For ye are all sons 
of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus. For as many 
of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. 
There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither 
bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye 
all are one man in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3. 26-28). 
Under the exhilaration of such a liberating doctrine the 
Corinthian women seem to have set aside certain well- 
recognized conventionalities, gone into the places of prayer 
without veils upon their heads and spoken in public. 
With a desire to call them back from these improprieties, 
so perilous to the life of the infant church, Paul issued the 
counteractive counsels of 1 Corinthians 11. 5, 7: “But 
every woman praying or prophesying with her head un- 
veiled dishonoreth her head; for it is one and the same 
thing as if she were shaven. . . . A man ought not 
to have his head veiled, forasmuch as he is the image and 
glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.” 

Maude Royden protests against Paul’s indictment of the 
spiritual inferiority of woman, which makes her removed 
one more step from Christ than man. It is not a matter 
of physical inferiority or of custom or expediency or 
ability to take part in public affairs but an implication of 
spiritual inferiority which has been of tragic consequence 
to the world’s womanhood. 

It is only when we turn to Paul’s later statement in his 
letter to the Ephesians that we are in a position to under- 
stand his mature point of view. In this more spiritual 
conception of the marital relationship he qualifies the 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 59 


harsh word “subjection” with the significant little phrase 
“as unto the Lord.” Just as Christ yearned to have his 
church spotless, without wrinkle or blemish, so that he 
might present it glorious, so, said Paul, should man 
cherish and nourish his wife just as carefully as he would 
his own body and as spiritually as Christ loved his church. 
Marital love is to be reciprocal; for not only is the wife 
to be considerate of her husband, but her loyalty is to be 
dependent on his loving her, gwing himself up for her. If 
this conception were carried out, there would need to be 
no concern about “the chaos of modern marriage” or 
any advocacy of trial marriage or free love of the Green- 
wich Village type. 

The New Testament ideal in practice.—When we think 
of the many Christian homes where mutual love of hus- 
band and wife exists, where there is that beautiful “giv- 
ing oneself up” for the sake of the other, Paul’s pattern 
still seems to persist. In the common application to the 
task of home building the question as to who is an au- 
thority disappears. (And wise it was for another great 
branch of the Christian Church recently to strike “obey” 
from the wedding ceremony.) Christ’s words to the wran- 
gling disciples are again applicable here: “Whosoever would 
be first among you, shall be servant of all.” How truly 
this could be said of many mothers and fathers both, who 
outvie each other in bearing the burdens of the family, 
and whose elevation of spirit sets the thermometer of good 
cheer for the entire household! 

In the home of Magdalena and Sebastian Bach do you 
suppose there was any question of superiority between the 
great soul of the musician and the worshipful, tender 
spirit of his best helper?+ or in the home of the Brown- 
ings, where both poets appraised each other’s inspired 
words? The rare atmosphere of their Florentine home is 
described by a visitor as being superlatively happy, not 
only because of the unusual qualities possessed by each 
but by their perfect adaptation. Their poetic genius 
seemed enriched and fused by the tie of marriage. Al- 
though Robert Browning was himself one of the world’s 
most distinguished poets he spoke with awe of his wife’s 

1See T'he Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach, by Esther Meynell. 





60 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


genius, losing himself so completely in her glory that he 
seemed to feel unworthy to unloose the latchet of her 
shoe, much less to claim her as his own. 

Travelers to the Orient count the Taj Mahal as one of 
the greatest jewels they are privileged to gaze upon. This 
gleaming building of white marble, with its perfect image 
in the companion pool, is the expression of a Mohammedan 
husband’s devotion to his wife in the centuries long before 
the “day of woman” dawned. An American clergyman 
and his wife were standing not long ago before its gleam- 
ing minarets, fulfilling the dream of their life. Before 
the husband had an opportunity of putting into writing 
their impressions on that occasion, his wife died. ‘The 
following beautiful words are his jeweled Taj Mahal, 
dedicated to the companion of that voyage. In granting 
his permission to quote them here the author—Dr. Wil- 
liam EK. Barton—said, “Tell the girls for whom you write 
that a happy home life is above all rewards the world can 
give a woman in an independent career”: 

And we sat for a time in silence, and I said, Keturah, if it 
were in my power I would not build thee a tomb like that. 
But I would rear to Heaven a memorial of thy Living Deeds 
and Words more beautiful and lasting than even this Noble 
Shrine. Humble and obscure must be any tribute that I shall 
ever pay to thy goodness and thy love, but in the heart te 
thy husband is a Taj Mahal. 

And now from the lower steps of that shrine I speak unto 
all husbands and all wives, saying, Let not your love grow 
commonplace. Speak often of it each to the other. Do con- 
stantly little deeds that tell of it. For this sacred and mys- 
terious tie that bindeth hearts together in that union which 
is the continual spring and foundation of new life through 
the generations is earth’s holiest temple and God’s best gift 
to us through each other. 


Edward Howard Griggs, in a little volume in his Art 
of Life Series, remarks that a love that respects personality 
encourages loyalty. He feels that entire moral equality, 
and not merely a sex urge taken for spiritual love, is 
essential for every abiding marriage. Lasting life com- 
radeships recognize that neither party is flawless and are 
generously tolerant as both go climbing up to God. He 
urges that courtesy be scrupulously observed in the inti- 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 61 


mate relations within the home, lest the devoted lover 
become the irate husband, and the gentle sweetheart a 
nagging, slatternly wife. 

Paul’s attitude toward divorce —‘“But unto the mar- 
ried I give charge, yea not I, but the Lord, That the wife 
depart not from her husband (but should she depart, let 
her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her hus- 
band) ; and that the husband leave not his wife” (1 Cor- 
inthians 7. 10, 11). This statement of Paul’s and also 
that in 1 Corinthians 7. 39 (“A wife is bound for so long 
time as her husband liveth”) show his attitude toward 
divorce to be entirely consistent with that of Christ: “For 
this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and 
shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one 
flesh? . . . What therefore God hath joined together, 
let no man put asunder. . . . Whosoever shall put 
away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry an- 
other, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her 
when she is put away committeth adultery” (Matthew 19. 
5. 6, 9). 

Divorces have increased seventy-five per cent in 
the last ten years in America, and a pooling of the ex- 
periences of hundreds of judges shows that eighty per 
cent of the proceedings were inaugurated by women. The 
sympathy of these judges was with the women, and their 
conclusion is that not the divorce laws but diseased mar- 
riage conditions themselves need reforming.1 What factors 
are back of these statistics: Hasty marriages? Greed for 
money or position? Neglect of parents? admonition? 

Is there any connection between the divorce situation 
and the fact that there are several States in the country 
where girls may be legally married before they may be 
legally employed? In fourteen States the legal minimum 
marriage age is twelve years for girls and fourteen years 
for boys. Has America any right to condemn India 
when in our own land there are 667,000 persons who were 
married when under sixteen or to children under sixteen, 
as disclosed by the recent study of America’s Child Brides 
by the Russell Sage Foundation ? 





1“The Chaos of Modern Marriage,’”’ by Beatrice Hinkle, M.D., Harger’s 
Magazine, December, 1925. 


62 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


Tue RELATION OF MoTHERS TO CHILDREN 


When Paul revolted from Judaism and began to walk 
in Christ’s way he revolted also against the current idea 
that woman existed chiefly for the purpose of bearing chil- 
dren to the lord of her domain. In this he seems par- 
ticularly modern, for he wanted to see her engaged in the 
spiritual ministrations for which she was peculiarly fitted. 
His ambition was for her to be even more than a mother. 
But by the time he came to write his first letter to 
Timothy he had reached a very interesting conclusion 
about motherhood. “She shall be saved through her child- 
bearing, if they continue in faith and love and sanctifica- 
tion with sobriety,” he said. 

In just what sense are mothers saved through the experi- 
ence of maternity? Is the glorious experience of mother- 
hood likely to make a woman more spiritual or less? 
How about those who rebel against parenthood and resent 
their children? Two young girls in a city high school both 
met the same moral tragedy. One of them was really re- 
deemed and sweetened by the care of her child and took 
a position to support her, going to the day nursery for her 
each evening after business and lavishing her whole affec- 
tion upon her. The other girl was so rebellious about her 
social ostracism that the child had to be taken from her, 
and its whereabouts kept secret. 

Older mothers and widows.—Aged women in the home 
are urged by Paul to refrain from “old wives’ fables,” to 
be reverent in demeanor, to instruct the young women to 
love their husbands and children, and to be diligent and 
chaste. There are women who, their hard tasks being 
well accomplished, are free to extend the gracious little 
courtesies and attentions for which the busy world hungers. 
Do you know any grandmothers who are the greatest bless- 
ing of their children’s homes? How do the young wives 
you know receive the counsels of the more experienced ? 
One bride recently said, “I’d rather spoil every meal for a 
year and learn how to keep house for myself than have 
either my own mother or John’s tell me how to do it.” 

Aged widows who have “extended hospitality, brought 
up their own children, ministered to the poor” are recom- 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 63 


mended by Paul for special offices of Christian service; 
but he deems it better for younger widows to remarry than 
to pledge themselves to service and go back on their vows, 
“going about from house to house; and not only idle, but 
tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they 
ought not.” ‘This advice has a most valuable application 
to-day, not only in the time wasting of neighborhood gossip 
but in making house-to-house canvasses in financial, mem- 
bership, or evangelistic campaigns. 

Religion in the home.—Paul’s attitude toward “mixed 
marriages” is very clear. “Be not unequally yoked with 
unbelievers,” he says in 2 Corinthians 6. 14. And in 1 
Corinthians 7 he says that in case the wife is a “disbe- 
liever,” the husband is not to leave her; nor should the 
wife desert her disbelieving husband. For there are the 
children to be considered: they are holy if their father is 
sanctified through the faith of their mother, or their 
mother through the faith of her husband. Otherwise, they 
are considered “unclean.” Have we moderns arrived at 
any better solution of the “mixed marriage” problem than 
this? Ministers, judges, divorce-law reformers, are all 
insisting that cases of incompatibility be treated on the 
basis of what is best for the child whose future is involved, 
A love relationship is at first a purely personal affair be- 
tween the two persons involved; but when it fruits in off- 
spring, a definite obligation to society is incurred. 

A certain devout young Catholic wife, finding that her 
moral but irreligious husband would not join her church, 
persuaded him to become a Methodist and, for the sake 
of keeping him actively interested, attended all the Sunday 
services with him, after first going to mass in her own 
church. Her solution was commendable. The Methodist 
girl who insisted upon her fiancé’s becoming an active 
Christian before their marriage was infinitely wiser than 
her chum, who “hoped to win” her husband after the fires 
of romance had abated. 

Concerning dress.—The average girl to-day meets with 
ridicule Paul’s advice about dress. “What have veiled 
heads and long hair to do with morality, and why is he so 
opposed to ‘braided hair’? anyhow?” one asked recently. 
“Of course, long hair used to be woman’s crowning glory. 


64. NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


But short hair is lots more convenient. Paul’s queer 
statements about our make-up have so prejudiced me 
against him that I have never been able to appreciate the 
really important features of his message.” 

Her attitude of whimsical rebellion was altered when 
someone explained that Paul was anxious for women to 
retain their veils in places of worship “because of the 
angels,” as he quaintly put it; in other words, that they 
should conduct themselves as if conscious of the “cloud 
of witnesses” observing their conduct. When he says that 
she might as well shave her head as go unveiled he alludes 
to the custom of harlots wearing their hair cut. The same 
thought is in his mind when, in his letter to Timothy, 
he protests against braided hair, which was associated with 
women of light character. Do you frankly feel that Paul’s 
recommendation in 1 Timothy 2. 9 is entirely valueless 
for even our day of scanty garments and gaudy color? 


THe MoutuaL RELATIONS OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN 


In counseling Christian deacons of the first century 
Paul urges them to rule their children and their own 
household well; “for if a man knoweth not how to rule his 
own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?” 
But as a counteractive to parental imperiousness he adds, 
“And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.” 
This is the reverse side of the coin inscribed “Children, 
obey your parents.” 

The adjustment of parents and children is one of the 
crying needs of the hour, when boys and girls seem to be 
even wondering whether “parents are people” at all. “I 
just love mother,” said a young woman recently; “but 
her opinions really don’t matter much in my world.” Is 
this attitude typical of many of your friends, who caress 
and pet their mothers, yet feel that their intelligence is 
not great enough to command their respect? For fathers 
and mothers to be interested in their sons’ and daughters’ 
activities without lording it over them; for them to be 
worthy of children’s respect and not break down their 
wills by a tyranny of opinion—these are some of the 
details involved in what Dr. Halford E. Luccock has 
called “the making of new saints.” We do not need to 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 65 


canonize the saints who lived’ fifteen hundred years ago 
but to bring about such conditions in the home and in 
industry as to make possible new haloes for new youths. 

The press, radio world, lecture platform, discussion 
forum, and pulpit of America are all expressing great con- 
cern over the breakdown of parental authority as a factor 
in the appalling crime wave of youth. Judge Jean Norris 
believes that the situation is even worse than the press 
pictures it. “I am appalled by the callousness of the 
youth who come before me,” she said in a Brooklyn forum 
recently. “They are self-centered and have no interest in 
or respect for fathers, mothers, or teachers.” As a means 
of preventing crime Judge Norris suggested better reli- 
gious education in the home and respect for parental au- 
thority. 

Not all the fault lies with the younger generation. A 
half page of one of the country’s leading newspapers was 
recently devoted to an advertisement made possible by 
citizens campaigning to help rebuild a spiritual American 
home. ‘The advertisement consisted in a large picture of 
a young girl going out of the house in evening attire to 
a motor car waiting in a blinding snowstorm, while her 
mother sat calmly reading about “a joy ride crash after 
a flask party.” These lines accompanied the illustration: 

THAT IS YOUR DAUGHTER 
GOING OUT OF THE DOOR 
For the evening. 
You are her mother. 
Do you know where she is going? 
Do you know 
with whom she is going? 
The New York State Prison Commission Reports that in 
RAYMOND STREET JAIL, BROOKLYN, alone 
In the Last Five Years— 
12,342 Boys and 
1,346 GIRLS— 
Have Been Locked Up! 


Is Your Daughter Going Out With That Class of Boys? 
Will Your Daughter Be One of Those Unfortunate Girls? 


WHAT ARE YOU DOING 
TO HELP CHECK CRIME? 


66 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


Another means of drawing parents and children closer 
would be the cultivation of a new set of modern notions 
by elders. Mothers and fathers who allow themselves to 
be illiterate about the great currents of world events can- 
not expect deference from the twentieth-century school- 


girl. 


Toe Mutua RELATIONS OF SERVANTS AND MAstTeEers 


Paul again gives a piece of reciprocal advice to servants 
and to those who employ them. Employees are to give 
loyal, unstinted service, not glossing over their tasks on the 
surface to produce a quick effect, but doing them as 
“servants of Christ.” On the other hand, employers are 
to refrain from unwarranted rebukes and to remember that 
there is One who is Master of servant and master alike. In 
the statement “They that have believing masters, let them 
not despise them, because they are brethren” we see the 
dawn of a social brotherhood that the world is still trying 
to bring to pass through collective ownership and bargain- 
ing and all the other experiments looking to permanent 
harmony between capital and labor. 

The same idea of the golden rule of brotherhood is 
brought out in the little letter of Paul to Philemon, whose 

eslave Onesimus was “unprofitable” and ran away. While 

absent from his master the slave was converted and was 
henceforth so valuable that Paul would have liked to 
keep him to minister to him in the “bonds of the gospel.” 
But he honorably returned him to his owner, more valu- 
able than before, because he was no longer a servant, “but 
more than a servant, a brother beloved.” 

Housewives agree that there is a “help” crisis in the 
United States to-day. Is this a matter of economic forces 
only, or is it a problem that could be solved by better per- 
sonal relations between employer and employee? Are 
domestic servants justified in feeling that there is a 
stigma attached to their situation, or is the degradation 
only in their own minds? Do you know of many homes 
where the maids are called in at family worship, as in 
the house of John Mark’s mother? (See the story of 
Rhoda in Acts 12. 12-17.) If there were family wor- 
ship to summon them to, there might be an atmosphere 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 67 


that would resolve difficulties on both sides. Social 
workers recognize the general-housework job in a family 
that is indifferent to its helpers as happiness- and friend- 
ship-loving human beings as one of the most fruitful 
sources of moral peril. 


THE Sum oF THE MATTER 


The intricate problem of keeping all the contacts within 
the home Christian, so that not only will “new saints” be 
made of its members, but even tradesmen delivering goods 
may feel the good will that radiates through its door, has 
one very simple solution: Keep Christ in the midst—the 
midst of the living room, dining room—yes, and even of 
the kitchen. A little girl of seven was looking at a print 
of the popular home picture “Christ Among the Lowly.” 
As she heard her mother explain that Jesus had gladly 
come as a Guest to the table of even that humble family, 
the child exclaimed, “But, mother, a guest is one who only 
comes sometimes. I want him to stay in our house all 
the time!” 

Old-fashioned wall mottoes are entirely out of date, but 
let us emblazon over the spiritual hearthplace of our homes 
this supreme injunction of Christ: “A new commandment 
I give unto you, that ye love one another, even as I have 
loved you.” 


QUESTIONS FOR Group DiscussION 


1. What is your idea of marriage: (a) A mutual part- 
nership on the fifty-fifty basis, a sort of give-and-take affair 
of two equally responsible persons very much alike in 
qualifications? (0) A relation in which man and woman 
accentuate their differences and, from the contrast, derive 
mutual inspiration and helpfulness? 

2. Do you agree with Dr. Beatrice Hinkle, of New York 
City, that the attainment of a “new reality” and genuine- 
ness by man and wife in marriage is the first step toward 
realizing sincerity between nations? ‘Think out what rela- 
tion one problem has to the other. 

3. Has the economic independence of women made rela- 
tions between the sexes in marriage more, or less, genuine? 

4. Do you believe that marriages would be more perma- 


68 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


nent if common intellectual and religious interests were 
deliberately cultivated? How would you go about help- 
ing a friend who had failed to keep pace with her hus- 
band’s advancement? Is a woman who nags at her hus- 
band because he is less educated than she likely to draw 
him out into completer companionship ? 

5. Do you believe many unhappy homes are due to the 
husband’s over-emphasis upon “being a good provider” 
and his consequent absorption with business rather than 
family interest? How about the attendant idleness of 
the wife of the successful “provider”? What would you 
suggest to make her surplus leisure useful to society? Do 
you believe overdevotion to household tasks may make a 
wife an uncongenial and irritated evening companion for 
her husband? 

6. Is there some one person who generally controls the 
temperature of your home? Is it you? Is it an atmos- 
phere of warm affection, encouraging cooperative effort 
and applauding the success of individual members? Louisa 
M. Alcott’s family used to listen to the little girl’s poems 
and declare them to be as “‘good as Shakespeare’s.” 

%. Do any members of the household “get on your 
nerves”? Why? Do you need to let their distasteful 
habits exert a tyranny over your disposition? Have you 
ever cultivated the art of “getting on with queer people’? 
Have you any “pet peeves”—those extravagant indulgences 
so ruinous to one’s disposition ? 

8. If being a parent is life’s biggest business, do you 
think the average girl is receiving sufficient “vocational 
guidance” along this line? Where is she receiving her 
parent-training course: from her mother, friends, syndi- 
cated news columns, Y. W. C. A. lectures, books? Would 
a wholesome, spiritualized education about marriage tend 
to reduce divorces ? 

9. How much of the antagonism between parents and 
their own children is due to lack of common standards in 
the homes of the school group governing such matters as 
hours for being home, size of weekly allowance, rules for 
dance chaperonage, etc.? Could the fathers and mothers 
agree on such standards with advantage to both genera- 
tions ? | 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 69 


10. Can there be too great attachment between parents 
and children? A certain girl who was never allowed by 
her mother to,make up her own mind about anything fell 
into such a dilemma when a splendid young man asked 
her to marry him that she lost her mental balance trying 
to decide between him and her mother. What was wrong? 
Ought a girl to measure her lover by what her father has 
achieved in the added years? 

11. Why and in what ways are parents responsible for 
the welfare of children other than their own? (See what 
Miriam Van Waters says about it in Youth in Conflict.) 

12. Mention all the ways you have observed in which 
elderly people may suffer aside from physical disability. 
Do elderly people attract you or make you impatient? 

13. With what feeling do you visualize your own old 
age? with dread? or in the spirit of Julia Ward Howe, 
who at ninety received an honorary degree from Smith 
College and felt that it was “too soon to go, when she was 
only beginning to live”; for life was “like a cup of tea— 
all the sugar at the bottom”? 

14. State frankly what is the usual attitude of clerks 
and tradespeople toward you. Do they try to avoid wait- 
ing upon you or serve you eagerly? Why is this? When 
you have been impatient, hurried, exacting, has it made 
any difference in them? 

15. Have you ever known any servants or employees to 
lead their masters or employers into a more vital religious 
experience? A secretary risked her position to persuade 
her boss to come out for Christ on a vital point of busi- 
ness policy. A maid in a suburban community insisted 
so consistently upon her mistress sending her to the vil- 
lage church each Sunday that the latter was led to resume 
her interrupted habits of worship herself. 


CHAPTER V 
MY FRIENDS—WHERE SHALL I MAKE THEM? 


WueEN Doris McDonald closed her desk and realized 
that she had dictated her last letter as personnel director 
of the Eastern Electric Corporation she was conscious of 
closing a definite phase of her life. The whole building, 
too, was regretfully aware that the girl who had accom- 
panied the corporation glee club, played forward on its 
champion basketball team, and been an unfailing source 
of radiant good cheer to the employees was quitting her 
business career to be married. As soon as the five o’clock 
bell rang, a throng of girls and men surrounded her desk; 
someone threw over it an embroidered linen cloth; a 
gleaming silver tea service and a vase of roses appeared; 
and a chorus of voices sang out: 

“Happy wedding to you, 
Happy wedding to you, 
Happy wedding, dear Doris, 
Happy wedding to you!” 


Out of the dull atmosphere of desks and filing cases a 
dainty collation appeared as by magic, and the whole 
organization threw its energy jubilantly into the pre- 
nuptial plans of their fellow worker. Liven the staff 
photographer came up to immortalize the occasion with 
a flashlight. 

How did it all come about? Simply because this girl’s 
every contact in the everyday world of affairs was a 
friendly contact. From elevator boy to aged watchman, 
from manager to the newest typist, everyone considered 
her his friend. Their farewell testimonial was simply an 
outpoured appreciation of her humanity, blooming in the 
coldly efficient atmosphere of a public-utilities corpora- 
tion. She had made her friends right where she was. In 
fact, she had won her fiancé there. So may we all at busi- 
ness, in our homes, at church, or in our playtimes make 
friends right where we are. The only friends Jesus ever 


70 


NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN ral 


had were those he made this way through his brief journey 
of tremendous service. 


THE SAMARITAN WOMAN 
John 4. 3-30, 39-42. 


He left Judea, and departed again into Galilee. And he 
must needs pass through Samaria. So he cometh to a city 
of Samaria, called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that 
Jacob gave to his son Joseph: and Jacob’s well was there. 
Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus by 
the well. It was about the sixth hour. There cometh a 
woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give 
me to drink. For his disciples were gone away into the city 
to buy food. The Samaritan woman therefore saith unto him, 
How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, who am 
a Samaritan woman? (For Jews have no dealings with Sa- 
maritans.) Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knew- 
est the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give 
me to drink: thou wouldst have asked of him, and he would 
have given thee living water. The woman saith unto him, 
Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: 
whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater 
than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank 
thereof himself, and his sons, and his cattle? Jesus answered 
and said unto her, Every one that drinketh of this water 
shall thirst again; but whosoever drinketh of the water that 
I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall 
give him shall become in him a well of water springing up 
unto eternal life. The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me 
this water, that I thirst not, neither come all the way hither 
to draw. Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and 
come hither. The woman answered and said unto him, I 
have no husband. Jesus saith unto her, Thou saidst well, 
I have no husband: for thou hast had five husbands; and he 
whom thou now hast is not thy husband: this hast thou said 
truly. The woman said unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou 
art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and 
ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to 
worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour 
cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, 
shall ye worship the Father. Ye worship that which ye know 
not: we worship that which ‘we know; for salvation is from 
the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true 
worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: 
for such doth the Father seek to be his worshippers. God 
is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship in spirit 
and in truth. The woman saith unto him, I know that Messiah 
cometh (he that is called Christ): when he is come, he will 
declare unto us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak 
unto thee am he. 


72 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


And upon this came his disciples; and they marvelled that 
he was speaking with a woman; yet no man said, What seekest 
thou? or, Why speakest thou with her? So the woman left 
her waterpot, and went away into the city, and saith to the 
people, Come, see a man, who told me all things that ever I 
did: can this be the Christ? They went out of the city, and 
were coming to him.... 

And from that city many of the Samaritans believed on 
him because of the word of the woman, who testified, He told 
me all things that ever I did. So when the Samaritans came 
unto him, they besought him to abide with them: and he abode 
there two days. And many more believed because of his 
word; and they said to the woman, Now we believe, not 
because of thy speaking: for we have heard for ourselves, and 
know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world. 


SoME OF JESUS’ FRIENDS 
Luke 8. 1-3. 


And it came to pass soon afterwards, that he went about 
through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good 
tidings of the kingdom of God, and with him the twelve, and 
certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and in- 
firmities: Mary that was called Magdalene, from whom seven 
demons had gone out, and Joanna the wife of Chuzas, Herod’s 
steward, and Susanna, and many others, who ministered unto 
them of their substance. 


John 11. 11. 
He saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep. 


John 15. 18-15. 


Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay 
down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do 
the things which I command you. No longer do [ call you 
servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: 
but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from 
my Father I have made known unto you. 


Matthew 26. 50. 
And Jesus said unto him, Friend, do that for which thou 
art come. 


SUPREME ADVENTURE IN COURSE OF THE Day’s RovuTINE 


Right where she was, engaged in the most ordinary 
duty of her everyday routine, the unnamed woman of 
Samaria met Jesus, the first Friend who had ever been 
interested in her spiritual welfare. She was drawing 
water as she had done hundreds of times before when 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 73 


she encountered her life’s supreme experience. Every 
woman of her village came there daily. Every village of 
Samaria had such a well. In fact, the very history of 
womanhood in her part of the world was linked up with 
wells. It was by the fountain of water in the Mesopo- 
tamian city of Nahor that Abraham’s servant had found 
Rebekah to take back to Isaac for wife. It was by a well 
in an Eastern field that Jacob met Rachel coming to water 
her father’s flocks. The well where Mary of Nazareth was 
accustomed to mingle with the other village maidens is 
pointed out to imaginative travelers in the Holy Land 
to-day. It was the one legitimate community center where 
the women were allowed to congregate for chatty ex- 
change of current news. The Samaritan woman did not 
go forth to meet Jesus. She would have promptly laughed 
to scorn any such suggestion of a spiritual Guest, for her 
interests were anything but religious. She was not the 
sort to go on arduous pilgrimages to far-off shrines, as 
thousands of non-Christian women are doing to-day in 
India, seeking peace for their souls in the filthy waters 
of the Ganges or in divers “holy places.” Yet she met 
Jesus, even where she was, by the historic well curb at 
Sychar. 

Jesus’ way of finding friends.—It was in just this way 
that Jesus made most of his friends. Having failed to win 
for his enterprise the approval of his blood kindred, early 
in his ministry he fared forth to win friends on the dusty 
highways of Galilee, on crowded lake shores or grassy hill- 
sides, in thronged market places or at the meeting points 
of Pharisees. He was not one passively to “live in a 
house by the side of the road” where the races of men went 
by; he plunged into their midst, joining their pilgrimages, 
mingled his voice with their own, imparting forgiveness 
here, good cheer there, healing where it was needed and 
giving spiritual guidance. It was only when oppressed by 
the importunities of those who would call him Friend that 
he withdrew to earth’s quiet places. Friends sprang up 
all along his way, even as, In Burne-Jones’s exquisite 
painting of the Nativity, flowers spring up about his 
infant feet, though winter snows cling to the distant hill- 
side, and provident Joseph gathers sticks for a fire. 


74 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


A young woman rose in a Lenten prayer meeting held 
in a city church and told of her efforts to befriend those 
who needed her influence right in their office: “Once I 
was unhappy because I could not be a missionary in India; 
to-day I find I can make friends for Christ right where 
I am.” A Sunday-school teacher had long been trying to 
win the Christian friendship of a most attractive girl 
but had seemed unable to “get under the surface.” One 
day when shopping in a certain store she found the young 
woman clerking there. ‘The girl was astonished to see 
her anywhere outside the church, which had been their only 
contact. She exerted every effort to please her and, before 
the woman left, volunteered to come to Bible class the 
following week. Right where she was, in her everyday 
business environment, the new friendship was begun. 

The American Association of Museums has adopted for 
its personnel a courtesy code that would develop the spirit 
of friendly cooperation in any group of workers wise enough 
to adopt it. Faith in the unselfish motives of coworkers, 
honor based on a high sense of justice, freedom from 
jealousy and criticism, are emphasized, as well as loyalty 
to the director. 

Among all workers in the museum [says the code] there 
should exist a friendliness in regard to each other. Where 
many are working together in close contact, each should have 
for the other a respect for his personality and intelligence, 
his feelings. JInconsiderate acts, gossip, inquisitive ques- 
tions, practical jokes, while often amusing, are always un- 
charitable and often cruel. 


Being friends with one’s family.—The “where she was” 
may be in the home as well as at business. Jesus’ own 
kin became believers after the resurrection, and one of his 
brothers—James—died a martyr for his sake. There is 
no life relationship that is not sweetened by friendship. 
John the Baptist and Jesus were cousins but more than 
cousins—friends—the one a forerunner, the other the 
Fulfiller of his prophecies. 

Parents ought always to be congenial friends for their 
children. Cicero was more than a father to Tulla. Mrs. 
Coleridge was more than a mother to Sarah. The father- 
and-son-movement and mother-and-daughter-week idea are 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 75 


not based on any new revelation of psychology. Castor 
and Pollux were famed in mythology as brothers who were 
also friends. Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, Charles and 
Mary Lamb, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, were 
brothers and sisters who drew their intimacy from the 
springs of an abundant friendship. Naomi was mother- 
in-law to Ruth, but more than that. Only a devoted 
friend could have implored: 

“Entreat me not to leave thee, 

And to return from following after thee; 

For whither thou goest, I will go; 

And where thou lodgest, I will lodge; 

Thy people shall be my people, 

And thy God my God.” 


At a certain evangelistic service a young woman ex- 
pressed herself as desiring to become a friend of Christ, 
but “not to-night.” No reason was given. But the next 
evening she returned with another girl who resembled her 
markedly. They were twins. The sister who was under 
conviction would not take the great step to Christ with- 
out first telephoning to her twin, ninety miles away, and 
having her too become acquainted with the great Friend. 

Overcoming barriers to friendship.—Note that the un- 
savory reputation of the woman of Samaria did not deter 
Christ from befriending and illumining her. 

She was inferior racially. At least according to the popu- 
lar point of view current among Jews of Christ’s day. She 
was of “mixed stock,” descended from some of the Assy- 
rian colonists who had settled in Samaria and intermar- 
ried with Israelites. Although her people kept the author- 
ized Jewish feasts, and their worship form was Jewish, 
they accepted only the first five books of the Old Testa- 
ment and interpreted them as directing the erection of 
their sanctuary not in Jerusalem but on Mount Gerizim. 
The Jews considered dealings with Samaritans to be un- 
thinkable and made their inferiority so proverbial that 
the “good Samaritan” of the Lord’s parable was a strik- 
ing paradox. 

The woman was inferior in her code of courtesy. Her 
ungracious reaction to the gentlemanly approach of the 
Master was rude. With rather a flippant cynicism she put 


76 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


her first question: “How is it that thou, being a Jew, 
askest drink of me, who am a Samaritan woman?” Again, 
when Jesus put at her disposal, not the stagnant water of 
the well of stored-up raindrops, but living water, bub- 
bling and springing up fresh with energy, her sarcastic 
reply was: “Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the 
well is deep.” Her third taunt was an ironical question 
as to whether he considered himself greater than their 
father Jacob, who had given her people the well by which 
they were even then standing and who was the spiritual 
giant from whom all her race dated their genealogy. The 
laugh of derision with which some young people meet those 
who seek to draw them into the Kingdom is sometimes a 
good indication that their wills are having their last fling 
of discourtesy, even as the woman of Samaria. The dark- 
est hour of their religious experience often heralds the 
dawn of their faith. 

She was inferior morally. Christ frankly told her that 
he realized that she had had five husbands, and that the 
one with whom she was then living was not in the mar- 
riage relation. She was evidently a woman of disrepute, 
a harlot of the town; yet for the sake of offering her the 
living water Jesus humbled himself to speak with her. His 
ministry reached down to the lowest depths of sin and 
misery, and then—miracle of miracles !—to this prostitute 
of a hated race he intrusted one of the most precious jewels 
of his treasure—the revelation of the true nature of wor- 
ship: “God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must 
worship in spirit and in truth.’ Whether at Gerizim, 
Jerusalem, Mesopotamia, Chicago, or Manhattan this 
revelation still holds. 

Can you afford to risk your own reputation by contact 
with girls whom you know to be morally inferior to you? 
If someone should see you walking along the street with 
one known to be ostracized from respectable circles, what 
would happen to you? 

But how did they come to be “outcast”? A New York 
“Follies” manager broadcast a request for chorus girls. 
The next day brought a stream of applicants, not, however, 
from the city, as he had expected, but from outlying coun- 
try districts, where girls had been listening in and had 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY ws 


heard his offer. It is just such a helpless surplus of un- 
trained workers for whom the city cannot possibly find 
enough honorable jobs who are a menace to themselves 
and to others while adrift. The Salvation Army was ap- 
proached by a delegation of chorus girls in New York 
City, asking that organization to build a home near Times 
Square for chorus girls out of work. If every city could 
have several houses like the new home of the Girls’ 
Friendly Society in Boston, where wage-earning girls can 
secure airy rooms and home privileges for a nominal sum, 
there would be fewer modern “Samaritan women.” 

The dweller-in-furnished-rooms has become a distinct 
social type which must be reckoned with. There is a cer- 
tain section in Chicago where the whole population moves 
every four months, where “Vacant” signs are displayed 
only for an hour, where no addresses are left behind, and 
where no old-fashioned social relationships exist. Here 
23,000 persons are living in furnished rooms. It is esti- 
mated that 52 per cent of them are single men, ten per 
cent single girls. Thirty-eight per cent are couples, of 
whom 60 per cent are living together unmarried. A cer- 
tain social worker visited the rooms of two lonely girls in 
this locality. The first one she found engrossed in writ- 
ing a letter to the “Lovelorn” editor of a cheap daily and 
surrounded by magazines featuring tales of girls lost in 
the city’s night life. “Why should I dig and work all 
day long and not have anyone to come home to at night 
and ask me what I’ve been doing?” she exclaimed. “A 
girl just has to have that in her life or—well, she has to 
get her thrill out of just what ’'m doing now—imagining 
myself the heroine of exciting romances.” The second 
girl’s room resembled a museum. The tiny bureau con- 
tained thirty articles, including a doll, pictures of a farm- 
house and the group who lived there, a snapshot of a spired 
village church, and a high-school commencement program. 
“T’ve just got to have this junk around me,” said the 
girl. “And see, I’ve bought this parrot, so there’ll be some- 
thing to speak to when I come home from work. I’ve 
trained her to say, ‘Good-by, Jennie’ in the mornings, 
and ‘Hello, Jennie’ at night.” 

If there are any rooming houses near your church, could 


"8 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


your class make a survey of the girls who live there and 
initiate a deliberate effort to befriend them? 


SHARING THE GREAT FRIENDSHIP 


Observe that the Samaritan woman, once she had felt 
the prophetic power of Jesus shining through his words 
to her, rushed away into the city to bring her associates to 
meet the new Friend—Jesus. One of the most glorious 
things spoken of women in all the New Testament is 
recorded of this outcast woman. ‘To the people she ex- 
claimed, “Come, see a man who hath told me all things 
that ever I did: can this be the Christ?” Their response 
was instantaneous: “and many of the Samaritans believed 
on him because of the word of the woman.” So satisfac- 
tory did Christ deem the fruits of that contact that he 
remained two whole days in the vicinity, so that those who 
had first come because of his new convert themselves gained 
abiding experiences of his power and believed, not simply 
because of her testimony, but because they felt for them- 
selves that he was Saviour of the world—not of Israel 
only but of Samaritans as well. 

Have you ever chanced to observe how naturally young 
Christians may be interested in introducing their friends 
to Christ? This is at the basis of all win-my-chum cam- 
paigns. 

“What did you give your boy friend for his birthday ?” 
a girl asked her chum. 

“T gave him a New Testament,” was the surprising 
reply, “and last Sunday he united with my church. The 
strange thing about it all is that we are much better friends 
now than ever before. We can talk about things that 
really matter.” 

Making friends in church.—Do you know of any safer 
place than the church for young people to meet congenial 
friends? “If it had not been for the wonderful friends 
I have made in this churth I would have given up my 
job and gone back home defeated with homesickness,” 
said a successful young man in a recent prayer meeting. 
Hundreds in every city could bear similar testimony to the 
effectiveness of the warm-hearted, outreaching ministry of 
city churches with social programs that befriend strangers. 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY v9 


Has not the country church a similar responsibility to 
migrant workers huddled in dismal boarding houses; to 
seasonal farmhands, traveling salesmen, school teachers, 
etc. ? 

Jf your church happens to resemble the one described 
in the following incident, what can you do to make its 
policy toward strangers more friendly? In a certain 
English church, which has a question box in its vestibule, 
the minister preached one Sunday on “Recognition of 
Friends in Heaven.” The following week he found this 
communication in the box: 

DEAR Srz: I should’ greatly appreciate it if you could make 
it convenient to preach to your people on “The Recognition 
of Friends on Earth,” as I have been attending your church 


for nearly six months, and nobody has taken any notice of 
me yet. 


Friends in life’s crises—A certain woman whom the 
court had thought wise to separate from the custody of 
her young daughter drifted into an Epworth League meet- 
ing in a delirium of despair. Her intention was to walk 
over the Brooklyn Bridge after the meeting and, if no one 
was passing by, to end her life’s tragedy there. At the 
close of the service a young girl grasped the stranger by 
the hand with a word of welcome and an invitation to 
return. Not until the forlorn woman revealed her story 
in the pastor’s “confessional” was the worth of the friendly 
word revealed. 


Tests oF FRIENDSHIP 


Note the persons whom Jesus explicitly spoke of as his 
“friends”: Lazarus, Judas—what a contrast! Yet is it 
not true that for both of them he paid the cost he stead- 
fastly counts in the fifteenth chapter of John? His serv- 
ice to Lazarus precipitated his own arrest (read John 11. 
47-53 and 12. 9-11 for the connection), and his faithful- 
ness to Judas survived even that friend’s treachery. He 
dared to show his friends all his own plans and motives 
even at the risk of frequent misunderstanding and lack 
of sympathy, sure that only by the unconcealed sharing of 
purposes could they come to be able to share his aims and 
his work. What sort of equality do you believe necessary 


80 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


between friends? Intellectual, so that the same interests 
may be followed, without having whole areas of thought 
that cannot be discussed? Have you known instances 
where people differed widely in financial and social stand- 
ing yet were warm friends? Must there be moral equality, 
so that standards of action will be uniform? Are people 
of widely different ages capable of deep friendship? It 
was always Jesus’ high standard, not the possible lower 
one, which prevailed. In that difficult situation of 
proffered and accepted friendship with the woman of 
Samaria people might be surprised at the unconventional 
conversation, but there could be no hint or suggestion 
that his standard was lowered to hers: “they marveled that 
he was speaking with a woman; yet no man said, What 
seekest thou? or, Why speakest thou with her?” 

In friendships between members of opposite sexes do you 
think moral leadership lies with the girl or the man? If 
the facts behind army desertions were studied they would 
reveal that in many instances a girl is the real causal 
factor. A certain young man living on a Western mili- 
tary reservation came to a city pastor’s study one evening. 
He sought admission to church membership. Everyone 
was impressed when, the following Sunday, he came to 
the altar in uniform. “The Christian centurion,” people 
thought. Only a short time later the pastor received a 
telephone call asking him if he would assist the same 
young man to cross the Canadian border. A young woman 
to whom he was very devoted had persuaded him to over- 
stay his leave in order to prolong his time with her. He 
had yielded to her whims to the extent of being tech- 
nically guilty of desertion, and arrest was imminent. One 
girl’s selfishness had destroyed not only his military career 
but his religious declaration made before the eyes of the 
world. 

What is the standard among your friends, both girls 
and men, concerning petting parties? What do you think 
of the sorority that insisted that its members allow their 
escorts to kiss them in order to maintain the popularity 
of the sorority? ‘The following statements show two cur- 
rent points of view. A college senior said, “Of course I 
see no harm in allowing a young man to caress me pro- 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 81 


vided I like him.” A young business woman explained 
her sudden refusal of a certain young man’s customary 
offer to “see her home from church” because he insisted 
upon kissing her good-night when they “weren’t even 
engaged.” With whom do you agree? Is unemotional 
friendship between young men and women possible? If 
your own convictions on this are not clear, look up the 
stories of Jerome and Paula, Ambrose and Monica, John 
Locke and Lady Markham. George Eliot said of Herbert 
Spencer: 

Since we understand that we are not in love with each other, 
there is no reason why we should not have as much of each 
other’s company as we like. He is a most delightful creature, 
and I always feel better for being with him. The brightest 
spot in my life, next to my love of old friends, is the de- 
liciously calm, new friendship that Herbert Spencer gives me. 
We see each other daily and have a delightful “camaraderie” 
in everything. 


The poet Cowper, inspired at the age of fifty by Mrs. 
Unwin, said, “She is so excellent a person and regards me 
with a friendship so truly Christian that I could almost 
fancy my own mother restored to life again.” Consider, 
however, the statement of a wise woman that “Platonic 
friendship between young men and women may continue 
on one side but never on both: one or the other is bound 
to suffer in the affections even if there is no moral 
damage.” Does it make any difference what is the con- 
trolling purpose of both lives? 

“T have a friend whose discipline I need”—is not this 
thought of the modern poet the same as is expressed in 
Proverbs: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend”? “A 
friend is one who will not let you be less than your best” 
is a definition given by a man who has been a stimulating 
friend to generations of college young people. 


QUESTIONS FOR Group DIscuUSsION 


1. Where have you made your best friends—in the un- 
usual experiences of travel, etc., or in the everyday con- 
tacts of home and business? 

2. Do you find yourself as scrupulous about keeping in 
touch with old friends as your mother is—by correspond- 


82 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


ence, etc.? Or are modern haste and overactivity making 
friendships difficult, and long lists of correspondents, such 
as characterized the genial poet Josephine Preston Pea- 
body, utterly impossible ? 

3. What can be done for a person who suffers when she 
feels herself among strangers? Will cultivation of inter- 
est in others’ affairs tend to wipe out self-conscious 
reticence ? 

4, Is friendship likely to be marred by too much disci- 
plining and corrective process? What do you understand 
by the words of Zechariah: “I was wounded in the house 
of my friends”? (Zechariah 13. 6.) 

5. Do you believe that girls have as great a capacity for 
lasting friendships as men? Do minor differences tend to 
separate them more easily? Are women in business, ac- 
cording to your observation, as fair to their associates and 
competitors as are men? 

6. A girl responding to a questionnaire gave as her 
experience that the greatest obstacle to her being a suc- 
cessful Christian was “men.” Does your experience tally 
with this? 

%. Are “Platonic” friendships safer for people of one 
temperament than another? For what type are they dan- 
gerous? 

8. What is your attitude toward coeducation? Why? 
How do you interpret the fact that three fourths of the 
women in college in the United States are in coeducational 
institutions? (96,908 were in 354 coeducational and 31,- 
769 in 115 women’s colleges in 1920, according to the 
United States Bureau of Education.) 

9, Are sex problems that confront the deans in coeduca- 
tional colleges any different than in women’s colleges with 
men’s adjacent? In which is there more frank friend- 
ship and in which more lovemaking? In which are happy 
marriages more likely to result? 

10. Do you believe that the girls of your community 
are provided with adequate places and opportunities for 
eae legitimate, safe, and congenial friends among both 
sexes! 


CHAPTER VI 
MY LEISURE—ASSET OR LIABILITY? 


“T WONDER what play my boy friend will take me to see 
Sunday night?” chattered one flaxen-haired stenographer 
to another in a home-bound trolley. 

“We’re going to see ‘Little Annie Rooney,” rejoined 
her companion. “You’d better come with us.” 

Neither girl, apparently, had the remotest idea of sug- 
gesting to her escort that they attend one of the attractive 
church services available in their city. Perhaps Doctor 
Cadman was right when, at a great Sunday conference 
for men, answering a question put to him as to the rela- 
tive progress of men and women in religion, he said: “I 
think men are doing a little better than women and have 
been doing so for the last seven years. I hate to say this 
but I have noticed a very much more marked difference 
in men than I have in members of the opposite sex.” 

The gentle Scotch essayist Robert Louis Stevenson was 
right when he said: “It is surely beyond a doubt that peo- 
ple should be a good deal idle in youth. Extreme busy- 
ness is a symptom of deficient vitality.” Yet the problems 
arising from idle-hour occupations make one wonder 
whether leisure is really an asset or a lability, something 
to be relished or dreaded. In the early days of the factory 
age the problem was to secure enough leisure to keep one’s 
balance physically and mentally. In our generation two 
hours a day have been added to the leisure of millions of 
men and women and their working week shortened nearly 
twelve hours. Is it for good or evil? The fatigue that 
follows strenuous periods at business or in the schoolroom 
lowers one’s powers of resistance to temptation and makes 
him reach out instinctively for the thing which will amuse, 
divert, and lift him wholly from the world of necessitous 
competition and grubbing. Nine times out of ten, when 
the word “leisure” is mentioned, “recreation” auto- 
matically links itself to it. 

83 


84. NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


Let us see whether we can find in the lives of any New 
Testament folks some light on the right use of leisure. 


LEISURE OPPORTUNITIES IN THE First CENTURY 


Diversions: (a) Visiting.— 
Luke 1. 39-45. 

And Mary arose in these days and went into the hill country 
with haste, into a city of Judah; and entered into the house 
of Zacharias and saluted Elisabeth. And it came to pass, 
when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped 
in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit; 
and she lifted up her voice with a loud cry and said, Blessed 
art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy 
womb. And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord 
should come unto me? For behold, when the voice of thy 
salutation came into mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb 
for joy. And blessed is she that believed; for there shall be 
bien raion of the things which have been spoken to her from 
the Lord. 


Luke 5. 29. 
And Levi made him a great feast in his house: and there 
was a great multitude of publicans and of others that were 
sitting at meat with them. 


Luke 10. 38, 39. 

Now as they went on their way, he entered into a certain 
village: and a certain woman named Martha received him 
into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who also 
sat at the Lord’s feet, and heard his word. 


Matthew 21. 17. 
And he left them, and went forth out of the city to Bethany, 
and lodged there. 


John 12. 1, 2. 
Jesus therefore six days before the passover came to Beth- 
any, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the 
dead. So they made him a supper there. 


(b) Weddings.— 
John 2. 1-5, 11. 

And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; 
and the mother of Jesus was there: and Jesus was also bid- 
den, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when the wine 
failed, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no 
wine. And Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to 
do with thee? mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 85 


unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.... 
This beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and 
manifested his glory; and his disciples believed on him. 


(c) Religious festivals.— 
Luke 2. 22, 23, 41-45. 


And when the days of their purification according to the 
law of Moses were fulfilled, they brought him up to Jerusalem, 
to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of 
the Lord, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called 
holy to the Lord).... 

And his parents went every year to Jerusalem at the feast 
of the passover. And when he was twelve years old, they 
went up after the custom of the feast; and when they -had 
fulfilled the days, as they were returning, the boy. Jesus tar- 
ried behind in jerusalem; and his parents knew it not; but 
supposing him to be in the company, they went a day’s jour- 
ney; and they sought for him among their kinsfolk and ac- 
quaintance: and when they found him not, they returned to 
Jerusalem, seeking for him. 


Self-improvement: (a) Phystcal up-building.— 
Mark 4. 35, 36. 


And on that day, when even was come, he saith unto them, 
Let us go over unto the other side. And leaving the multi- 
tude, they take him with them, even as he was, in the boat. 


Mark 6. 31, 32. 


And he saith unto them, Come ye yourselves apayt into a 
desert place, amd rest a while. For there were many coming 
and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. And 
they went away in the boat to a desert place apart. 


Mark 2. 23. 


‘And it came to pass, that he was going on the sabbath day 
through the grainfields. 


Matthew 13. 1. 


On that day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the 
sea side. 


(b) Mental development.— 


Acts 17. 16, 19, 21-23, 28. 


Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was 
provoked within him as he beheld the city full of idols.... 
And they took hold of him, and brought him unto the Areo- 
pagus, saying, May we know what this new teaching is, which 
is spoken by thee? ... (Now all the Athenians and the 
strangers sojourning there spent their time in nothing else, 


86 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


but either to tell or to hear some new thing.) And Paul stood 
in the midst of the Areopagus. ... What therefore ye worship 
in ignorance, this I set forth unto you. ... For in him we 
live, and move, and have our being; as certain even of your 
own poets have said. 


(c) Spiritual refreshment.— 


Matthew 4. 1, 11. 


Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to 
be tempted of the devil. ... Then the devil leaveth him; 
and behold, angels came and ministered unto him. 


Mark 1. 35. 


And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose yp 
and went out, and departed into a desert place, and there 
prayed. 


Mark 6. 46. 


And after he had taken leave of them, he departed into the 
mountain to pray. 


Galatians 1. 15-18. 


But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated 
me, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through his 
grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among 
the Gentiles; straightway I conferred not with flesh and 
blood: neither went I up to Jerusalem to them that were 
apostles before me: but I went away into Arabia; and again 
I returned unto Damascus. 

Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit 
Cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days. 


RECREATION IN SOCIABILITY 


Visiting. —Of all the journeys recorded in literature 
none is more beautifully chronicled than the pilgrimage of 
young Mary of Nazareth, over the hills of Judea, to the 
home of her cousin Elisabeth in one of the priestly cities 
of the land—possibly Hebron. All the records of Queen 
Elizabeth’s “royal progresses” through merry England; 
of John Ruskin’s “Hours in the Alps,” and of Bayard 
Taylor’s “Views Afoot?? are surpassed by the simple state- 
ment so packed with meaning: “And Mary arose in those 
days and went into the hill country with haste, into a city 
of Judah.” Over and over again to-day her errand is 
reenacted by many a young wife, hurrying to the home of 
a married sister to confide very precious tidings, to seek 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 87 


just such strengthening counsel as Mary imbibed from the 
future mother of John the Baptist, and to speed along 
the months of waiting and of readjustment to a new 
relationship to humanity. Just as the poet Coleridge was 
spiritually so exalted by the sheer beauty of the valley of 
Chamounix that his soul poured out its ecstasy in his 
famous sunrise hymn, so Mary was inspired by her cousin’s 
salutation to give voice to her Magnificat, the most heavenly 
lullaby-psalm ever uttered by woman (Luke 1. 46-55). 

Christ too found visits to sympathetic friends a fruitful 
use for his rare hours of leisure. To Bethany he often 
turned, lodging at the home of Lazarus and his sisters 
or dining at the house of Simon the leper. Visits to his 
own townsfolk in Capernaum seem to have been less en- 
joyable than those he made among the simple people, who 
held much in common with his outlook upon life. 

Some of us can remember the thrill that “going visit- 
ing” and “having company” gave us in our childhood. 
The company dinner may have been an important feature, 
but there was also a real adventure in acquaintance, and 
joy in other persons as persons. Has visiting gone out 
of vogue to-day? Is it that friendships mean less to 
folks; or that their homes are too crowded for home hos- 
pitality? Where people use their leisure wholly for com- 
mercial forms of recreation, what else do they sacrifice 
besides their savings? 

For most of us the opportunity for visiting whether as 
hostess or guest comes during vacation or over week-ends. 
Haye you ever attended week-end house parties where moral 
difficulties developed, or where friendships were strained 
to the point of breaking? Think down into why this 
happened. It surely could not happen in visits to shut-ins 
in their homes or hospitals or jails, or in writing good- 
cheer letters to sick and distant friends. But would there 
be any real recreation and diversion in doing that? Have 
you tried it to see? 

Weddings and other social ceremonies.—Such occa- 
sions enlivened the leisure of women in a century whose 
primitive means of housekeeping reduced their free time 
to a minimum. LEarly and late the wives of righteous 
Hebrews toiled at the preparation of food according to 


88 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


Mosaic rules; at the fastidious cleansing of their cooking 
vessels and the making of simple peasant garments like 
Jesus’ seamless cloak, which. tradition says that Mary 
wove for him. In homes like Mary’s the manifold activi- 
ties of the virtuous woman as described so poetically in 
the last chapter of Proverbs were daily repeated. She 
rose up while it was night to give food to her household; 
laid her hands to the distaff and reached them forth to the 
needy; clothed herself in fine linen and looked well to 
the ways of her household, so that her children rose up 
and called her blessed. With a daily program like this 
such an event as a wedding would loom large on her 
horizon, so we can understand the importance attached 
to the wedding that Mary attended with her Son Jesus 
at Cana in Galilee. The glad atmosphere of rejoicing and 
of festival only accentuates the painful embarrassment 
that sympathetic Mary felt for her hostess (possibly a 
kinswoman) when it was discovered that there were too 
many guests for the refreshments provided. How like a 
normal, careful housewife Mary appears when she ventures 
to confide the circumstance to Him who, she was confident, 
could somehow remedy it! 

Jesus seems to have hesitated to use the power he had 
just refused to exert for himself. And it was perhaps a 
reference to other talks they had had which caused him 
to use the ceremonious address that our English version 
makes sound almost harsh: “Woman, what have I to do 
with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” Yet some inner 
working of the Father’s will led him to make that wedding 
the occasion of his first “sign” in Galilee. In so doing he 
has hallowed every Christian marriage festival since, for 
his mingling with the happy guests that day is remem- 
bered every time the marriage ritual is recited. 

Several other interesting New Testament passages re- 
veal further details about Oriental weddings which punctu- 
ated so pleasantly the leisure hours of first-century women. 
The parable of the wise and foolish virgins reveals the 
custom of going forth to meet the bridegroom with lighted 
lamps; the story of the woman who lost her wedding gift 
indicates the importance which was attached to the bride’s 
head ornament, made of pieces of silver; the discourteous 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 89 


refusal of the invited guests to attend the wedding feast, 
prepared by the generous host of Christ’s parable empha- 
sizes the serious breach of etiquette involved in such pro- 
cedure. 

Religious festivals—These occasioned keenly antici- 
pated pilgrimages to central places of worship. What 
friendly intercourse and laughing buoyancy must have 
characterized those annual journeys of Nazareth townsfolk 
to the great capital city of Jerusalem at Passover time! 
What exchange of anecdotes, what a welcome change of 
scene, as the companies of travelers left behind the dark 
drudgery of their little homes and sallied forth into the 
sunshine until the hills and temple domes of the sacred 
city loomed before them! How we wish that we might 
have listened to their talk as they sauntered on! Chaucer’s 
lines well express the longing for change from the daily 
humdrum, not only of early English nun and knight, mer- 
chant and prince, but of all hard-working families, walking 
along the Palestine roads or riding in a second-hand flivver 
on American highways: 

“Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth 
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth 
The tendre croppes.... 


Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, 
And palmers for to seken straunge strondes.” 


The Feast of Tabernacles, too, brought its atmosphere 
of rejoicing. Booths of green were erected on the roofs 
of homes in commemoration of the earlier days when 
boughs of trees had sheltered the wandering nation.. 
Women were admitted to certain parts of the sanctuary 
from which they were customarily excluded. Music filled 
the air, and legends of bygone experiences were revived. 

What religious festivals contribute to the enjoyment of 
the rural communities in your vicinity to-day? Harvest 
home, booth festivals, the Christmas entertainment, and 
Armistice Day celebrations are coming to be a part of 
modern church life. Has your church a pageantry 
schedule, whereby the observance of religious festivals 
engages a large part of the leisure of its young people 
and keeps their good times under the roof of the church? 
A certain group of talented young women in a city Bible 


90 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


class spent the leisure evenings of five months rehearsing 
a splendid cantata. They invited their young men friends 
and husbands to join their chorus. The net result of their 
effort was as follows: two evenings of wholesome recrea- 
tion for eight hundred people; two hundred dollars cleared 
for their class service fund; personal savings accounts in- 
creased by money saved from commercial amusements that 
would otherwise have filled the rehearsal evenings; new 
friendships formed among Christian young people. Much 
to the surprise of the pastor and audience the cast got to- 
gether on the stage after the last curtain call and spontane- 
ously broke into singing, “God Be With You Till We 
Meet Again,” showing the spiritual value they attached to 
the enterprise of their leisure moments. Best of all, one 
young man who had persistently resisted the demands of 
the church upon his life said, “A few more performances 
like this will persuade me to join the church after all.” 


RECREATION IN SELF-IMPROVEMENT 


Leisure, as Christ understood it, was designed not ex- 
clusively for the purpose of sheer pleasure but also for 
self-improvement. 

Physical upbuilding.—Jesus found nature’s healing in- 
dispensable. Scripture is full of his physical footprints 
as he walked through Judea and Galilee. “As they were 
on the way to Jerusalem, . . . he was passing along the 
borders of Samaria and Galilee.” “And after these 
things, Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in 
Judea.” “Passing through Jericho” he saw Zaccheus. On 
the day of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem he walked 
as far as Bethphage and only then commandeered the ass 
which was to bear him through the city streets. Every 
day he was teaching in the Temple; at night he went out 
and lodged in the Mount of Olives, just as busy people 
to-day hurry to the open spaces of the suburbs after the 
day’s toil in the crowded city. 

The very terms he used to Peveribe himself were symbols 
of the road. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life: 
no one cometh unto the Father, but by me, *he said. “If 
a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not.” His inspiring 
symbolism was carried over into the minds of the disciples, 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 91 


When John was looking for a phrase to describe the deser- 
tion of the weakling pupils he said, “Many of his disciples 
went back and walked no more with him.” And when he 
came to write his epistles he declared, “If we walk in the 
light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with 
another.” “And this is love, that we should walk after 
his commandments.” 

It was from his walks through the countryside that 
Christ gathered observations that couched concretely his 
messages of overwhelming revelation. The vineyards of 
purple fruit, the birds of the air, the golden grain of the 
fields, the wayside flowers, the ill-fated ox fallen into a 
pit, children at play—how think you that Christ noted 
these except as he sauntered leisurely along on foot? It 
was John Finley, president of New York University, who 
called the attention of a vast radio audience to the fact 
that the word “saunter” is derived from Sainte Terre, or 
Holy Land; and harks back to the day when Crusaders 
sauntered or walked through the Sainte Terre on their 
way to Jerusalem. So valuable does Doctor Finley feel 
walking to be as a leisure-hour activity that he has offered 
medals to those who will walk a specified distance and 
report to him. The lost art of walking could not only 
help save our generation from physical degeneracy and 
prove a spiritual panacea but also revive the old adage 
“Solvitur ambulando” (problems may be solved while walk- 
ing). , 
‘Christ believed, too, in brief vacation periods for physt- 
cal refreshment. A certain young girl recently declared: 
“T have decided that the man I marry must be fond of life 
in the open. For one who truly loves nature and all the 
sincere, fundamental things at the heart of the world must 
certainly be wholesome and pure.” The athletic facilities 
offered by city parks, playground associations, colleges, 
and churches put physically profitable leisure at the dis- 
posal of every young person. 

Mental development.—Jesus’ knowledge of the Scrip- 
tures and Paul’s ability to hold his own in the stronghold 
of Greek philosophy in Athens and to quote from their 
own poets urge us not to cut ourselves off from the revela- 
tions of the world’s great minds. “Books are the precious 


92 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


lifeblood of the masters.” Henry Ward Beecher used to 
say that if he found that people whom he visited contented 
themselves with plain furniture and simple clothes in 
order to purchase books they rose immediately in his esti- 
mation. A certain mother is making a practice of re- 
reading Cesar’s Commentaries (bridge chapter and all!) 
with her young son and is looking forward to brushing up 
on The A’nerd next winter. She is giving up numberless 
bridge parties to do this but finds her mind delightfully 
alert. 

“What sort of books have you read within the past 
year?” was a question put to a young woman applying for 
a post on the foreign-mission field. What would you 
answer to this question? A librarian is authority for the 
statement that most of the serious reading of to-day is 
being done by men. A few girls take out books of poetry 
and volumes of plays, but most of them select well-thumbed 
stories of love. 

An increasing number of first-rank colleges and uni- 
versities are giving night students the same status as those 
enrolled in day classes, so that they may earn degrees. It 
takes longer, of course, to complete the required number 
of courses, but many are able to shorten the time appre- 
ciably by giving their vacation time to summer courses. 
Most cities have regular evening divisions of the public 
grade, high, and trade schools. The following item was 
sent from London to the New York Times: “London’s 
191 night schools were attended by 117,358 students.” In 
New York City alone, where the aggregate registration in 
institutions of higher learning rolls up to 90,000, 51,788 
persons are attending public night schools. This means 
that to the many alluring invitations flaunted in their 
faces by the lights of Broadway after a fatiguing day in 
the office these folks are saying, “No,” for the sake of an 
educational ideal. Is it not encouraging to find such 
numbers of adults who are willing to expose themselves to 
“the pain of a new idea”? 

Spiritual refreshment.—Leisure makes for just such 
spiritual refreshment as Christ found himself in need of 
when he “went out every night to the Mount of Olives” or 
entered into a boat, saying to his disciples, “Let us go 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 93 


over unto the other side of the lake’ He, as well as 
Paul, stored up the power for his future ministry during 
a wilderness retreat when he measured his own strength. 
Nor can we forget how leisurely was his thirty-year period 
of preparation for his three years of public ministry. 

Vacations are necessary for everyone who cares for his 
own spiritual safety and vigor. He who begrudges him- 
self a day’s holiday will grow stale and unfit for his life’s 
work and get into a hopeless rut, like the proverbial Lon- 
don busman. When given his first holiday in twenty years 
this poor fellow could think of nothing to do. So, al- 
though surrounded by the British Museum and galleries 
of art, Westminster Abbey and other churches rich in 
monuments of the past, he just jumped on a bus and took 
a ride. 


“The bow that’s always bent will quickly break; 
But if unstrung ’twill serve you at your need. 
So let the mind some relaxation take 
To come back to its task with fresher heed.” 


This old fable of Phedrus is right and it finds its modern 
echo in the words of John Masefield, who poetically urges 
us to come out of our cage and take our souls on a pil- 
grimage. 


QUESTIONS FoR Group DiscussIOoN 


1. What is the first thing to which you naturally turn 
when you have leisure? Is this characteristic of your best 
self ? 

2. Are your idle-hour occupations harmful to you in 
any way? harmful to anyone else? 

3. How can you test whether a certain amusement is 
harmful? Can you improve on Susannah Wesley’s rule ?— 


Would you judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of 
pleasure, take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, im- 
pairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense 
of God, or takes the relish off spiritual things: in short, what- 
ever increases the strength and authority of your body over 
your mind—that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may 
be in itself. 


4, If a girl who is associated with you in business or 


94 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


social circles is making a wrong use of her leisure, what 
can you do to wean her away? 

5. Has the public dance hall any grip upon girls with 
whom you come in contact? 

6. How do you stand with regard to the broadcasting of 
prizefights ? 

%. Do the plays, the films, and the newspaper comics in 
your community tend to build up public sentiment for 
temperance, decency, and good taste, or would this press 
statement describe your situation ?— 


Western newspapers, for instance—or nearly all of them— 
support the prohibition law editorially. But the comic strips 
and other syndicated stuff they get from New York too fre- 
quently take vicious slaps at the prohibition law. New York 
vaudeville, shipped to the provinces, does the same thing. 
So do a dozen other influences. Altogether it constitutes a 
campaign of suggestion to law violation which is extremely 
annoying to native American communities. 

New York is the home of the American theater and it is 
promoting the corruption of the drama by the importation of 
European ideas of “art.” Indeed, New York is going Europe 
one better: it seems to be specializing in profanity, blasphemy, 
and nakedness. It is useless to say that New York cannot 
stop this, for it succeeds in doing about anything it wants 
to do. It drove public prostitution off its streets, to the city’s 
everlasting glory. It can drive filth off the stage when it 
gets ready. When it does it will be serving the entire coun- 
try, not simply the city. 


8. What are some of the effects you would expect from 
the fact that there were 93 criminal plays out of a total 
of 223 showing at one time in New York City? 

9. Do you find it easier or harder to live up to your 
highest ideals after seeing the sort of play or film you 
usually select? 

10. Do you think Christian people can help reform the 
stage more by patronizing those plays which do contain 
real moral messages, such as Channing Pollock’s “The 
Fool” and “The Enemy,” or by absenting themselves al- 
together from the theater? 

11. Are the women of your community doing anything 
to clean up public newsstands where magazines of a low 
order and degrading books are on sale? Make a point 
of observing the type of illustrated newssheet and novel 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 95 


that many who:sit next to you in trolleys, etc., are read- 
ing. 

12. Is there any difference between playing cards for 
money at home and gambling at Monte Carlo? Do you 
approve of lotteries and “chances for charity”? 

13. Mention all the concrete ways you can in which the 
burden of housewife and mother has been lightened. As- 
sign relative places of importance to (a) scientific devices; 
(6) public activities concerned with child care; (c) com- 
munity playgrounds and public-library story hours; (d) 
education tending to make childbearing easier and less 
of an interference with ordinary activities; (e) the popu- 
lar sanction of restaurant dining. How are most of the 
mothers whom you know to be enjoying these helps em- 
ploying their added leisure? 

14. Do you agree with the woman writer who said that 
the rearing of a few children does not constitute sufficient 
activity for the life time of any woman sound in body and 
mind ? 

15. In what ways are “home girls” and women not 
gainfully employed guilty of economic waste in the use of 
their leisure? How about habitual window shoppers and 
tea gossips? What would you suggest doing about girls 
who are not producing anything useful for society but are 
simply consumers of leisure and of the fruits of parents’ 
or husbands’ labor? 

16. What do you think of part-time work as a solution 
for women who find home tasks insufficient to absorb all 
their energies? What sorts of work may be done in 
women’s surplus leisure ? 

1%. Do your leisure activities have any value for your 
community ? 

18. When have you last attended a stimulating lecture 
on current events, new books, or some live topic of the 
day? When visited your nearest museum? 

19. What recreational facilities of a wholesome sort are 
_available for young women in your community? Hockey, 
tennis, or boating in the parks? Gym classes in churches 
or Young Women’s Christian Association? What is the 
recreational program of your church for its young people? 

20. What did the young man mean who said: “‘T’he rea- 


96 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


son why there are so many ‘bachelor maids’ nowadays is 
the too-high cost of courting’? Do the girls you know 
demand that their new friends spend money generously 
for their enjoyment? 

21. Name all the means of recreation at your disposal 
which do not involve any expense. 


CHAPTER VII 


MY HEALTH AND CLOTHES—DO THEY MATTER 
TO THE COMMUNITY? 


“T’~n not be at Bible class next Sunday,” announced a 
tastefully dressed and beautiful girl of eighteen to her 
teacher one day. “My firm is sending me to Saranac to- 
morrow.” Her flushed cheeks, thin figure, and glistening 
eyes summarized her story, and she added the details. 
“The medical examiner said I have not been spending 
enough money for food and have contracted tuberculosis.” 

Inquiry as to how she budgeted her weekly salary of 
twenty dollars revealed that she was paying ten dollars 
for room and dinners, two dollars for lunches and carfare, 
and spending eight a week on clothes. “I simply must have 
lots of cute little five-dollar hats,” she said, “and silk hose 
almost every week. Then, I am paying for my fur coat 
on installments, and of course I get a ‘wave’ every Satur- 
day. I have to keep up my appearance in a big office 
like ours, you know. So I’ve just been skimping on break- 
fast and lunch.” 

The girl’s story could be duplicated a hundredfold over 
in every city. There is a very definite relation between 
health and clothes; between health and morals; and be- 
tween clothes and morals. Clothes, carfare, and room rent — 
eat up funds which should go for food. The shortage of 
inexpensive lodgings in decent houses creates a critical 
situation. The Young Women’s Christian Association, 
through its dormitories and room registry, in 1924 helped 
44,185 girls in New York City to obtain suitable lodgings. 
Despite its noble efforts and those of the Association to 
Promote Proper Housing fifty thousand girls are exposed 
yearly in New York City to the “perils of the landlady.” 
A proposed clubhouse in upper Manhattan is to have one 
thousand rooms, nine hundred of which have been spoken 
for in advance by women who describe themselves as being 
“neither working girls nor people of independent income.” 


97 


98 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


Widespread interest in personal and public health is one 
of the ‘most salient characteristics of our age. The na- 
tional health-education movement in the United States 
is carried on by. an innumerable host of popular agencies, 
such as baby clinics, open-air schools; child health week, 
with its pageantry of vitamins; free dispensaries; Boy and 
Girl Scout and Camp Fire creeds; Red Cross propaganda ; 
institutes of public health; schools of nursing; intensive 
surveys of definite communities; the creation of “health 
zones” in districts notoriously unhealthful; and the benef- 
icent world sweep of the Rockefeller Foundation. The 
preschool child, the American Indian, the Negro, the farm 
woman—yes, and even the people of our own fireside, who 
start the day with broadcast setting-up exercises served 
with music, are all receiving their share of attention. Yet, 
through these progressive, scientific methods of promot- 
ing physical vigor we have really only just caught up 
with the emphasis Christ himself placed upon health and 
the physical welfare of individuals. No other aspect of 
his ministry is recorded with greater detail. Probably no 
modern physician has so wide a variety of baffling diseases 
in his practice as confronted Christ in the congested, 
poorly drained, unspeakably dirty thoroughfares of Judea. 


Jesus’ Purpose IN HEALING 


The mother of Peter’s wife.— 


Luke 4. 38, 39. 

And he rose up from the synagogue, and entered into the 
house of Simon. And Simon’s wife’s mother was holden with 
a great fever; and they besought him for her. And he stood 
over her, and rebuked the fever; and it left her: and imme- 
diately she rose up and ministered unto them. 


The daughter of Jairus.— 


Luke 8. 40-42, 49-56. 

And as Jesus returned, the multitude welcomed him; for 
they were all waiting for him. And behold, there came a man 
named Jairus, and he was a ruler of the synagogue: and he 
fell down at Jesus’ feet, and besought him to come into his 
house; for he had an only daughter, about twelve years of 
age, and she was dying. But as he went the multitudes 
thronged him. ... 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 99 


While he yet spake, there cometh one from the ruler of the 
synagogue’s house, saying, Thy daughter is dead; trouble 
not the Teacher. But Jesus hearing it, answered him, Fear 
not; only believe, and she shall be made whole. And when 
he came to the house, he suffered not any man to enter in 
with him, save Peter, and John, and James, and the father of 
the maiden and her mother. And all were weeping, and be- 
wailing her: but he said, Weep not; for she is not dead, but 
sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn, knowing that she 
was dead. But he, taking her by the hand, called, saying, 
Maiden, arise. And her spirit returned, and she rose up im- 
mediately: and he commanded that something be given her 
to eat. And her parents were amazed: but he charged them 
to tell no man what had been done. 


The widow of Nain’s son.— 


Luke 7. 11-17. 


And it came to pass soon afterwards, that he went to a city 
called Nain; and his disciples went with him, and a great 
multitude. Now when he drew near to the gate of the city, 
behold, there was carried out one that was dead, the only son 
of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the 
city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had com- 
passion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. And he came 
nigh and touched the bier: and the bearers stood still. And 
he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was 
dead sat up, and began to speak. And he gave him to his 
mother. And fear took hold on all: and they glorified God, 
saying, A great prophet is arisen among us: and, God hath 
visited his people. And this report went forth concerning him 
in the whole of Judea, and all the region round about. 


HEALTH AND SOCIAL EFFICIENCY 


Men have paused to note the concern of this afflicted 
woman’s friends for her serious condition; others have 
marveled at Jesus’ sympathetic attitude as he stood by 
her bed while she was consumed by what Doctor Luke 
terms “a great fever”; and by Christ’s absolute command 
over the grip of the disease. But the most significant item 
of the incident to us as women is recorded in those won- 
derful climactic words of Luke: “and immediately she rose 
and ministered unto them.” 

Fitness to serve—Is not a chief purpose of health 
fitness to minister to one’s family and community? It is 
not enough simply to prevent our own selves from becom- 
ing public charges in hospitals and asylums for the insane ; 


100 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


it is, rather, a matter of keeping one’s “tone” so vibrant 
and the white corpuscles that battle against invading dis- 
ease germs so active that health will just overflow in 
rich service to others. 

Joan Jones received the bitterest blow of her life when 
the medical examiner for the Woman’s Foreign Mission- 
ary Society told her that her heart was too weak for the 
climate of India. “I am going anyhow,” she declared. 
“T’ll pay my own passage over; and if at the end of two 
years I am still alive and carrying on for Christ, you can 
refund the money and enroll me as one of your mission- 
aries in regular standing.” Strangely enough her health 
improved as soon as she reached India. “And immedi- 
ately she rose up and ministered” in the city evangelistic 
work at Baroda, which had been abandoned after Helen 
Robinson’s death at sea. She was actually able to post- 
pone her furlough to free a disabled fellow worker; and 
when she returned to the States after five years, her 
physician said: “You are better than when you left 
America. Go back to India just as soon as possible.” 

Elizabeth Barrett, feeling herself a chronic invalid, 
doomed to an early death, secluded herself with her books 
and poems, evading for several months the importunate 
requests of the young poet Robert Browning, to call upon 
her. When finally she began to sun herself in the strong 
vigor of his great Christian personality she took a firmer 
grip on life, rose up from her invalid’s couch, and, as poet, 
wife, and mother, ministered unto the world from her gar- 
den in Italy for many years with the greatest poems that 
have ever come from the pen of an Englishwoman. 

The relation of health to morals—Our health matters 
to the community not only because tt is a prerequisite to 
all social service but because tt has a direct bearing upon 
our moral welfare and the welfare of others for whom we 
are responsible. A considerable proportion of the crimes 
and moral offenses that clutter our courts are due to im- 
poverished vitality, malnutrition, organic degeneration, 
and overtaxed nervous systems. Dangers to the health and 
moral welfare of women and the race are increasing with 
their increasing participation in industry. Social studies 
seem to prove a definite effect of speeding up and of long 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 101 


hours upon health and also upon ability to meet moral 
crises. Nervous speed is required in most industrial occu- 
pations; for example, in the telephone industry the aver- 
age calls in one hour are 223, or 3 1/2 a minute; in the 
canning industry, one girl can inspect two cans of peas 
a second, or 72,000 in a day; in shoe factories an expert 
can make 48,000 eyelets a day. Twenty-nine States allow 
women to work from fifty-five to seventy hours a week. 
In seven States there is no limit. In addition there are 
the effects of industrial accidents and the moral perils of 
night work for women, as in subway booths, theaters, etc. 

All these things take place in our own United States. 
How about the physical and moral health of women who 
work in the mines in India or live in the overcrowded fac- 
tory dormitories of Japan and China? 

There are obvious benefits to women’s health resulting 
from their widespread participation in golf, tennis, and 
swimming. National contests produce such types as Helen 
Wills, who at seventeen won the national tennis champion- 
ship; or Gertrude Ederle, who was the first woman to 
swim the English Channel. These are quite different in 
their effect from the popularity contests that make sensu- 
ous beauty rather than health their basis. The recon- 
struction program of France emphasizes athletics for her 
young women, including cross-country runs, field meets, 
and other outdoor activities. Both here and in Europe 
there is a rapid extension of the summer-camp idea. 
Young girls spend from one to six weeks with fine young 
women counselors. The idea is beginning to extend to 
older women also. 


THE SoctaL AND MorAut ImMporTANCE OF CLOTHES 


Clothing and health.—In the opening paragraph of this 
chapter we have seen how one girl surrendered her health 
for the clothes she carried upon her back. There are other 
relations between clothes and health. The conditions 
under which clothing is made are vitally important to the 
health of the wearer. The New York City Women’s Club 
not long ago held a unique fashion show in the interest 
of public health. Society girls were used to demonstrate 
that gowns can be modish even when they contain the 


102 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


Prosanis label, which guarantees manufacture under sani- 
tary conditions and minimizes disease by contagion from 
workers in sweatshops. 

The conditions of manufacture are of even greater im- 
portance to the health of the garment maker. For years 
the Consumers’ League, public nurses, and public-spirited 
physicians have been crusading to improve conditions under 
which women labor in the garment industry. In New 
York City (which makes 75 per cent of the dresses, coats, 
and suits worn by women in the United States) prior to 
1910 most of the factories were located in dark base- 
ments, tenements, and attics with inadequate sanitary pro- 
visions and poor fire escapes. ‘To-day a Joint Board of 
Sanitary Control is ceaselessly inspecting factories, en- 
couraging unions to maintain clinics for diseased women 
workers, and stressing disease prevention, healthful pos- 
ture, cleanliness, and personal hygiene. Similar progress 
has been made in other cities. 

Dress and morals.—The late Dr. John Henry Jowett 
used to put this matter very cleverly when preaching from 
that great text “And behold a great multitude, which no 
man could number, out of every nation and of all tribes 
and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and 
before the Lamb, arrayed in white robes.” This was his 
epigrammatic statement: “White robes are simply washed 
habits”’—transformed ways of life. 

Current literature is laden with articles debating whether 
“flapper Jane is as bad as her mode of dress seems to indi- 
cate, or whether there is not less fire than the smoke indi- 
cates.” College professors range in their convictions from 
the one at New York University who believes that “rolled 
stockings are all right” but wonders whether they are worn 
really for comfort or just to imitate, to the more conserva- 
tive one who reminds us that “there was a day when it 
was customary for girls never to appear on campus in a 
shirtwaist without a coat or with her collar and cuffs on 
the outside of her coat.” 

Imagine the tempest that would rage in the home of a 
present-day girl packing her trunk for college if a letter 
should arrive containing such instructions as the follow- 
ing sent by Miss Lyman, the first lady principal of Vassar 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 103 


College: “We may beg that expensive trimmings. be laid 
aside and may suggest that the skirts of the dresses be 
left plain unless, in remaking, some fold is needed to 
hide a defect.” In the early days of Vassar each senior 
was made to stand upon a high walnut table in the lady 
principal’s room to have her graduation dress inspected ! 
But it must be remembered that such injunctions as this 
came from the same age that regarded our American girls 
as placid and delicate, capable only of mild exercises in 
the “calisthenium” or the indoor riding school, which gave 
such éclat to young college women in the 1860s; and 
which considered “oratory and debate (whether public or 
private) not feminine accomplishments.” ‘The same leap 
that has led to recent debates of Vassar teams with Oxford 
men has led to the wide program of athletics, including 
skiing, the glory of autumn runs on the cinder track, the 
wild hilarity of basketball and the hockey fields; and to 
the healthier, rosier American girl who deems no subject 
too daunting for her consideration. 

The Vatican and the Hebrew Union of Orthodox Con- 
gregations in this country have both officially protested 
against immodest dress of women. The resolution of the 
latter, deploring the indecent mode of dress “at present 
customary among the female sex,’ and urging “the 
daughters of Israel to clothe themselves with proper 
modesty and, in particular, the ladies attending services, 
so as not to conflict with the holiness of places of wor- 
ship,” is remarkably akin to the plaint of Isaiah 3. 16-23. 
This picture of the world’s first flapper, as painted by the 
prophet many centuries ago, startles us with its modernity : 
Many daughters of Zion and of the Gentile world too are 
still “haughty, and walk with outstretched necks and 
wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making 
a tinkling with their feet.” 

Apart from its immodesty the current mode of dress 
among many young people has an immoral aspect because 
of the economic waste it entails. Man has settled on a 
pretty definite standard, which enables him to get longer 
service out of his wardrobe than his wife and sister, who 
often find their gowns and wraps out of style before they 
are paid for. A man can step into his tailor’s shop, select 


104 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


material for a suit, be measured, and place his order within 
fifteen minutes; while a girl may easily shop all day for 
an evening gown and come home fagged out from a fruit- 
less search, having accomplished nothing more than resist 
the unbecoming or the ultra fad of the moment. Fashions 
change, literally, overnight. And only when girls come 
to realize that the whole situation is all a definitely set- 
up scheme of manufacturers to force extremes that will 
quickly be passé and thus entail additional purchases will 
they select their wardrobes on the basis of becoming color, 
quality of material, and moderate conservatism in style. 
Could dress be only slightly standardized, half the worries 
of the “female of the species” could be avoided, and a good 
part of the time and money fruitlessly expended be di- 
verted to more profitable ends. 


HEALTH AND CHILD WELFARE 


With the stories of Jairus’ daughter and the lad of Nain 
before us we can readily see the attention given by Christ 
to the restoration of young life. In one instance the twelve- 
year-old daughter of an influential and courteous ruler 
of a synagogue was revived from the sleep of death and re- 
turned to her parents. In the other instance the only 
son of an obscure widow of Nain was given again to the 
sorrowful but uncomplaining mother just as the neighbors 
were following his body outside the town gate. It was 
possibly a vision of his own widowed mother at Nazareth 
which induced Christ to intercede with the powers of 
death and set upon stricken youth his mark of evaluation. 

As a result of these official stamps of his concern for 
young life and of his habitual setting of a “child in the 
midst” each succeeding century of Christendom has been 
outstripping the others in its attention to child welfare. 
At the first national baby congress of the United States, 
held in 1924, more than eight thousand babies were ex- 
amined. 

And it is not only the little darlings of the rich who are 
receiving the ministry of health. Great institutions are at 
work in behalf of the unprivileged boys and girls. For 
instance, there is the Bowling Green Neighborhood Asso- 
ciation, formed by Wall Street business men to study and 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 105 


to improve the health conditions of the eight or ten thou- 
sand people who stay “back of the buildings” in the world’s 
most congested financial district when the army of office 
workers makes its nightly exodus. The property that was 
originally hired in the midst of the tenements for a settle- 
ment house has been outgrown, and to-day, through the 
gift of Hamlin Childs, a new Dormitory Community 
House (Wall Street’s own charity) is in process of con- 
struction as a witness of the “attempt of business men to 
do their duty” and give child health a place on the ticket. 
The infant-mortality rate of the Bowling Green District 
at the lower tip of Manhattan has been reduced from 321 
a thousand to 116 a thousand. The baby-health competi- 
tion, conducted close to New York harbor, where shrieking 
tugs are constantly heralding the arrival of newcomers 
from other lands, takes on an international aspect, as 
mothers—Syrian, Polish, and Italian—vie with one an- 
other for the supremacy of their cherubs and the capture 
of the gold pieces awarded by the business men. 


QUESTIONS FOR Group Discussion 


1. What inferences can you make from New Testa- 
ment passages as to Christ’s rules for his own health? 
Can you find any definite allusions to exercise, moderation 
in diet, simplicity of daily habits, freedom from worry, 
observation of rest periods, on his part? With these ex- 
amples as a basis can you draw up for yourself a practical 
health-creed which would be pleasing to him? 

2. Have you any tested health rules you would recom- 
mend to other girls? 

3. What can be done to check the patent medicine 
menace to health? How about this from the pen of poet 
John Dryden as a suitable motto? 

“Better to hunt in fields for health unbought 
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. 


The wise for cure on exercise depend; 
God never made his work for man to mend.” 


4, What is your community doing to fulfill the words of 
Christ: “I came that they may have life, and may have 7 
abundantly” ? 


106 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


5. What do you believe to be the relation between a 
healthy body and a pure and cheerful soul? Are men 
more likely to respect “women with a wallop” of robust 
health and outdoor sportmanship ? 

6. Does Shakespeare’s maxim “The apparel oft pro- 
claims the man” still hold good? Is his standard of dress 
up to date ?— 


“Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy 
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy.” 


7. Have you ever seen, in subways, trolleys, on the street, 
or even in church, modes of dress which made it difficult 
for you to be pure-minded? What must be their effect 
upon men? 

8. Can you find any scriptural basis for making your- 
self as attractive as is consistent with Christian char- 
acter ? 

9, What effect does the manner of dress of a school 
teacher have upon her pupils? What is your evidence for 
your opinion ? 

10. Are children aware of their mothers’ clothes to 
appreciate, condemn, or be ashamed of them? 

11. Frankly what is your attitude toward the relative 
good looks of a flapper, carefully groomed with cosmetics, 
as compared with a healthy, youthful face set off by a 
becoming mode of dress? 

12. Are personal cleanliness and good grooming more 
important than clothes per se? 

13. Can we sum the matter up by saying that it is the 
motive that gives the moral slant to dress? What differ- 


ence of motive is there between Rosa Bonheur’s wearing ~ 


trousers and short hair when visiting the Paris stockyards 
to make studies resulting in such masterpieces as “The 
Horse Fair” and the modern girl’s appearing on city 
thoroughfares in knickers and sweater or on beaches with 
scantier bathing suits than even men are accustomed to 
wear? 

14. The girls of a certain club wondered why young 
Mrs. X did not buy one new hat or dress all winter long. 
When spring came, she invited them to meet in the beau- 
tiful home she and her husband had just purchased. 


EE ee 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 107 


Ought you to restrict your personal expenditures for a 
similarly sensible goal? 

15. Estimate the number of hours and the number of 
dollars you have spent in purchasing your wardrobe dur- 
ing the past three months. Could you have reduced either 
without serious sacrifice? To what helpful cause might 
you have devoted a part of this time and money? 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE LITTLE LOST ARTS OF LIFE—HOW CAN 
I FIND THEM? 


_In a lofty nave of a certain English cathedral, which is 
a mellow dream of Gothic beauty in architecture, is an 
enormous window of painted glass rich in tone and change- 
less in color. But no one has yet succeeded in discovering 
the process by which it was made centuries ago. The secret 
of its beauty is as much of a lost art as the fabrication of 
prehistoric Mexican carvings in pure gold, of Tyrian dyes, 
of Egyptian scarab jewels, of medieval French tapestries, 
or Raphael’s inimitable blue. Just so, there are many little 
fine arts in life which have become all but lost in the tank- 
like onrush of human progress—fine arts that would make 
life richer and more pleasurable if they could be recovered 
or reproduced in our mechanical age, fine arts that were 
the very essence of Christ’s nature and his way of life. 


THREE OF THE Lost ARTS 


Good cheer.— 


Matthew 9. 2, 20-22. 


And behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, 
lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the 
sick of the palsy, Son, be of good cheer; thy sins are for- 
given. ... 

And behold, a woman, who had an issue of blood twelve 
years, came behind him, and touched the border of his gar- 
ment: for she said within herself, If I do but touch his gar- 
ment, I shall be made whole. But Jesus turning and poe 
her said, Daughter, be of good cheer; thy faith hath mad 
thee whole. 


Matthew 14. 25-27. 


And in the fourth watch of the night he came unto them, 
walking upon the sea. And when the disciples saw him walk- 
ing on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a ghost; and 
they cried out in fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto 
them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid. 


108 


NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 109 


Acts 27. 22-25. 

And now I exhort you to be of good cheer; for there shall 
be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For there 
stood by me this night an angel of the God whose I am, whom 
also I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must stand before 
Cesar: and lo, God hath granted thee all them that sail with 
thee. Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer. 


John 20. 11, 18, 15. 


But Mary was standing without at the tomb weeping.... 
Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not 
where they have laid him... . Jesus saith unto her, Woman, 
why weepest thou? 


John 16. 33b. 


In the world ye have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I 
have overcome the world. 


Meditation.— 
Luke 2. 19, 36-38. 


But Mary kept all these sayings, pondering them in her 
heart. . .. And there was one Anna, a prophetess ... who 
departed not from the temple, worshipping with fastings and 
supplications night and day. And coming up at that very 
hour she gave thanks unto God, and spake of him to all them 
that were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. 


Courtesy.— 


Luke 7. 36-40, 44-47. 


And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat 
with him. And he entered into the Pharisee’s house, and sat 
down to meat. And behold, a woman who was in the city, a 
sinner; and when she knew that he was sitting at meat in 
the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster cruse of oint- 
ment, and standing behind at his feet, weeping, she began 
to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair 
of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the 
ointment. Now when the Pharisee that had bidden him saw 
it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a 
prophet, would have perceived who and what manner of 

Peroran this is that toucheth him, that she is a sinner. And 
Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to 
say unto thee. And he saith, Teacher, say on.... And 
turning to the woman, he said unto Simon, Seest thou this 
woman? [I entered into thy house, thou gavest me no water for 
my feet: but she hath wetted my feet with her tears, and 
wiped them with her hair. Thou gavest me no kiss: but 
she, since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my 
feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but she hath 


110 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, 
Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loveth much: 
but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. 


Goop CHEER 


There was nothing more characteristic of the human 
Jesus than his joyousness, his optimism. One phrase that 
was very often on his lips and is recorded frequently, under 
a wide variety of circumstances, is “Be of good cheer.” 

The basis of joy.—A glance at the settings under which 
he gave this oft-reiterated encouragement will show how 
manifold are the reasons he found in life for men and 
women to keep up their spirits. ‘To the palsied man it was 
forgiveness of sin; to the woman suffering from an old 
ailment, release from suffering; to the storm-tossed disci- 
ples, the assuaging of terrifying mental complexes; to a 
discouraged Paul, persecuted in his name, the whispered 
assurance of his own companionship on the far journey to 
Rome. Even life’s darkest moment of grief over a lost 
loved one Christ reckoned to be consistent with cheer when 
to the weeping Mary he said, “Woman, why weepest thou ?” 
And as if to summarize all grounds for joy he made the 
supreme entreaty: “In the world ye have tribulation: but 
be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” 

In other words, none of us can frame a plausible excuse 
for gloom. The gentle Stevenson, who gave us the buoyant 
lines 

; “The world is so full of a number of things, 
I’m sure we should all be happy as kings,” 


was constantly pushing back death by sheer will to go on 
creating. He wandered the face of the earth, from Saranac 
to Samoa, in search of health, singing of the road of the 
loving heart. Dickens too, with his genius for good cheer, 


has set down for our inspiration a real basis for joy in the - 


conversation between crusty, selfish, old Scrooge and his 
nephew, poor but thriftily attempting to meet the needs 
of his large family. Scrooge, concluding his statement 
about Christmas being humbug—“‘just a time for paying 
bills without money, for finding oneself a year older but 
not an hour wiser’—exploded: “What right have you to 
_ be merry? You're poor enough!” to which the indomitable 


% 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY NOE: 


nephew made that memorable retort: “Come, then! What 
right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to 
be morose? You're rich enough!” 

The most cheerful girl in a certain club is one whose 
mother is a hopeless prisoner of her mind in a sanitarium. 
Though constantly overshadowed by this oppressing grief 
and by the realization that her family’s reverse of fortune 
has deprived her of the college education that was to have 
been hers she goes forth radiantly to work each morning 
in the subway rush. Her unquenchable good cheer makes 
her a favorite among young and old. She says, “I once 
saw a little verse, attached to a modest bouquet some- 
one had laid at the base of the memorial cenotaph in Lon- 
don, which just expresses me: | 


“Friends may think that I forget you 
When they see my cheery smile; 
Yet they never know the heartache 

That the smiles hide all the while.’ ”’ 


The distinction between good spirits and good cheer.— 
Good cheer is something abiding, the crucible of “‘over- 
coming”; while good spirits are a mood of a moment, 
which may for no good cause suddenly descend to “the 
dumps.” Young people are often thought of as supreme 
optimists, but, as Dr. John Hutton of London indicated, 
youth is the most easily discouraged sector of the race. 
“Tt tends to lose heart when discouragements thwart its 
ambitions.” Young Timothy, writing to Paul about the 
difficulties of his parish, wanted to give up and was held 
to his task only by the unescapable logic of the great 
apostle, who wrote him, “Take thy share of hardness.” 
Youth’s good spirits are admirable, but because they have 
not become stabilized into good cheer, the leadership of the 
universe cannot yet be turned over to them, much as they 
may desire it. Genuine good cheer comes from accepting 
one’s share of the world’s hardness, going through with 
one’s work faithfully from day to day, playing the game, 
and finding life happier, simpler, and more worth living 
all the while. 

Good cheer in the face of death.—Christ’s surprised 
question to Mary in the Easter garden seems to imply 


* 


112 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


that he allowed no place for despondency even in moments 
of supreme human sorrow. To be sure, he once wept for 
his friend Lazarus but ceased his mourning as soon as he 
realized that there was at hand a great need that he could 
meet. Continued mourning which blinds one to service 
that should be rendered is not of the spirit of Christ. Is 
your faith in immortality so real that you can approach 
grieving friends confidently, with Christ’s own queries ?— 
“Woman, why weepest thou?” “Why are ye troubled? 
and wherefore do questionings arise in your heart?” “Be 
not amazed; . . . he is risen; he is not here.” 


MEDITATION 


Its present unpopularity —“I just hate to be alone. If 
an evening comes when I have no definite engagement after 
business, [ always phone one of the girls to come over and 
talk to me while I catch up with my mending or rid out 
my bureau.” ‘Thus spoke a certain girl who fairly well 
represents the spirit of her age. The frenzied activity 
that fills all our days and nights has made us afraid of 
solitude and filled it with blue bugaboos, goblins of gloom, 
and solemn specters of introspection. Some people are 
so annihilating their own personalities by constant rushing 
about that were they to look in a true mirror, no reflection 
would come back. We go to work in crowds, worship in 
crowds, play in crowds—in fact, we have surrendered to 
“the crowd mind,” which is giving psychologists good 
ground for fear about our future. Edward Alsworth Ross 
calls the crowd “the lowest form of human association” 
and claims that “thronging paralyzes thought.” He be- 
lieves that “crowds are morally and intellectually below 
the average of their members.” 

Our acute need for solitude.—We all need a desert place 
(even if it is only within the kingdom of our mind), a 
prayer place like the little stone chapel of Queen Mar- 
garet at Edinburgh. If you are a business woman you 
need to shut your soul in, thrust yourself headlong into the 
universe of God, and roam there until you have wrested 
something of sheer spiritual beauty to counteract the very 
practicality of your daily affairs. If you are a mother you 
will find many things to “ponder” concerning the goodness 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 113 


of God and the precious revealings of him in the upturned 
face of your child. .Mary’s life in the little house at 
Nazareth must have been cluttered with wunescapable 
rounds of monotonous tasks, so that she felt, as did Julia 
Ward Howe: “How can I wipe noses and see to flannel 
petticoats and still be expected to read and meditate and 
do things of abiding value? As to the soul of me—the 
part that feels and thinks and imagines—I fear it will 
have to wait until the next world, for there is no place 
for it in this!” Yet Mary meditated on all the sayings of 
the shepherds and the Wise Men, “pondering them in her 
heart.” It is indeed a fine art to be able to resist suc- 
cumbing to “the tragedy of trifles’ and to wrest from 
each day something of abiding value to the real self of 
us. 

The reason why so many young people are so confused 
about their selection of a life calling is that they refuse to 
take time to sit at the feet of Christ, as did Mary, and 
“hear his words.” Maude Royden’s tender sympathy and 
gracious helpfulness are the flowers of a deep, silent fel- 
lowship with God. She came out of Oxford with a feeling 
that she ought to study her Bible at least as diligently as 
she had been pondering the Greek philosophers. Her 
scholarly approach to a neglected Book led to a tremendous 
yearning for a personal knowledge of a Christ of power. 
One day the secret of making that power a reality in her 
own life was revealed by a Quaker who had had a similar 
experience and had heard a voice speak to her, “Be quiet 
and hear what I have to say to thee!”” To many of us he 
is saying those very words: “Be quiet and hear what I have 
to say to you.” This is essential to be even a good worker. 
It is said of Thomas A. Edison that when he was told that 
an operation was necessary to cure him of the deafness 
that was shutting him out from so much of the world’s 
affairs he at first consented reluctantly; then, on the very 
day it was to be performed, sent word to the doctor not to 
come. He preferred to remain deaf because he wanted 
“to go on thinking and found he could think better when 
the notses of the world were shut out.” 

The peril of a meditative temperament.—“I don’t like 
that word ‘meditation,’?” said an alert business woman. 


114 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


“Tt sounds so medieval and suggests being shut up in one 
of the nunneries for which the Middle Ages were famous. 
Meditative people are so apt to be morbid and impractical 
and just plain lazy.” However, there is a way of “dream- 
ing and not letting dreams your master be.” ‘The alterna- 
tion of action with meditation is a wholesome corrective. 
We are led to believe from the phrase in Luke 10. 39— 
“Who also sat at the Lord’s feet”—that Mary was accus- 
tomed to doing her share of the household duties; and we 
know that in addition to choosing “the good part”—-sitting 
at the feet of the Christ Guest and pondering over his 
words—she also bestirred herself upon the occasion of 
a later visit shortly before his death to secure the precious 
ointment “and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his 
feet with her hair.” Even Anna the prophetess, who “de- 
parted not from the temple, worshiping with fastings and 
supplications night and day,” burst into action when she 
beheld the Child-Christ blessed by Simeon; for “she 
spake of him to all that were looking for the redemption 
of Jerusalem.” 

Hilda of Whitby, by her wholesome blending of action 
with meditation, offers a great contrast to some of the 
other medieval mystics—a contrast that is very acceptable 
to the modern woman. ‘This once-pagan girl of a dark age 
was made abbess of the great new monastery at Whitby, 
where both men and women devoted themselves to the 
pursuits of their order. Her administrative powers were 
so exceptional that a great center of religion and culture 
flourished under her regime, and many prominent people 
sought her advice and her interpretation of the love of 
God. In the days when monks were bending over the 
copying desks that left to posterity such exquisite sacred 
manuscripts, she made her abbey a center of religious edu- 
cation, sending out monks to convert half-Christianized 
parts of Britain. It is said that five of her students became 
bishops, and that she was the great inspiration of Cedmon, 
the “father of all English poetry.” 

A similar blending is found in the life of Lady Helen 
Lucretia Cornelia, whose life story is depicted in the great 
central window of the library at Vassar College. This 
remarkable young woman received her doctorate from the 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 115 


University of Padua in 1678 after training under the emi- 
nent theologian Hippolytus and other professors. But 
her intellectual prowess and meditative habits did not deter 
her from engaging in many works of charity. When, at 
the age of only thirty-eight, her immortal soul returned 
to God, the mourning city observed her passing with a fu- 
neral that was a counterpart of her triumph when crowned 
a doctor. Her body was attired in a Benedictine oblate, 
over which was placed the symbol of a doctor, and the 
brow of the laureate was crowned with a double garland 
of lilies and laurels: the one indicative of the purity 
of her life; the other typifying the profound learning of 
this young woman who, in that time so long preceding the 
day of feminism, used. her intelligence to the greater glory 
of her God. 

The use of meditative moments.—A genuine acquaint- 
ance with God may be cultivated by just sitting and listen- 
ing for his voice. How do you know that he may not 
dictate to you some such utterance as he spoke to Frances 
Havergal in her thrilling poem beginning, “Reality, reality, 
Lord Jesus Christ, thou art to me!” The Bible may be 
really discovered, perhaps by reading it in a fresh trans- 
lation such as Moffatt’s, or Goodspeed’s, or Mrs. Helen 
Barrett Montgomery’s. Read it as if you had never seen 
it before, “for pleasure rather than for piety.” People 
would be more sensible if they read fewer books about 
the Bible and spent their time on the Book itself. 

Some of the world’s really great literature may be given 
the attention it merits—books that give vistas of whole 
eras in history and judgments of life’s deep things, which 
cannot be discussed in any other way. “Do young Ameri- 
cans read anything at all? Do they know anything? 
Why do they think God wasted his time in putting a 
Browning or a Shakespeare into the world?” We may be 
sure that we have become proficient in the fine art of medi- 
tation when, even in the midst of a crowd, we can get 
“apart” and ‘think a while. 


“T almost never say my prayers 
With smoothly folded eyes— 
So many prayers go blundering 

Each day to paradise. 


116 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


“1’d think that God would tire so 
Of prayers all neat and trim 

When rows and rows of them each day 
March stiffly up to him. 


“T wait until some cool, fresh dawn 
When he goes down our walk, 

And then I run and slip my hand 
Within his hand and talk.’ 


CouURTESY 


The charm of it.—Much of the charm that people felt 
for Christ was due to his exquisite courtesy of manner. 
Whether to a despised woman of Samaria—surprised that 
a gentleman, and a Galilean at that, should address her; 
or to little Zaccheus, whose sense of inferiority Christ 
dispelled by inviting him to come down from the tree to 
be his host; or to the suave young ruler himself, so ex- 
emplary in courtesy, Christ’s approach was the embodi- 
ment of grace in conduct. The secret components of his 
courtesy are revealed in the Sermon on the Mount: “Judge 
not, that ye be not judged.” ‘“‘Whosoever shall compel 
thee to go a mile, go with him two.” “All things there- 
fore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, 
even so do ye also unto them.” In an unforgettable way 
Christ enacted his conception of courtesy in the incident of 
the sinful woman of the streets, who, slipping into the 
banquet room of the rich Pharisee, did for Christ those 
little niceties which the host had overlooked and was re- 
warded by appreciation from his own lips. Look up Jesus’ 
rules for guests (Luke 14. 7-11), for hosts (Luke 14. 12- 
24), his “rules of the road” for Christian workers (Luke 
10. 1-20), and his requirements from his personal friends 
(John 15. 14, 15). 

We all like courteous people if their courtesy is not sham. 
The late Walter Hines Page, in a letter to a friend, con- 
fessed that it was by genuine courtesy that he had achieved 
what he had been able to achieve; and that it was for this 
that the people liked him who did like him. 

The late Dr. John Henry Jowett, that prince of. English 
preachers, was one day walking over a muddy road in the 


1**Devotions,’’ by Elinor L. Norcross; from the Christian Century; used by 
permission. 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY BAA? 


hills behind the British camp. Right on the edge of the 
ruts, on their very lips, as it seemed, he saw dainty little 
flowers strangely blooming. “So may it ever be in my 
life,’ he thought: “exquisite flowers of delicate courtesy 
blooming in the very ruts!” 

The unselfish expressiveness of a courteous personality. 
—Have you ever watched a person who is ill at ease being 
introduced to a group of strangers? Have you ever noticed 
how he freezes up, hiding his embarrassment behind a 
wall of blasé reserve? What a warming contrast to see 
the approach of a really gracious personality, reaching out 
‘in generous giving of self in wholesome abandon! Real 
courtesy is not “holding back” but “letting go” the assets 
of one’s whole moral make-up. It is self-expression to the 
nth power. Mrs. Helen Gould Shepard is its embodiment 
when she is entertaining groups of Japanese girls from 
American schools, in her home at Irvington. She is able 
to address each by her own unpronounceable name (having 
studied the guest list diligently beforehand) and makes the 
sincerest of inquiries into their happiness in this far 
country, putting them all immediately at ease. At Christ- 
mas her courtesies are not handed over en masse to a 
professional shopper, but in person she goes to select an 
appropriate fur robe for a Young Men’s Christian Asso- 
ciation secretary in the Northwest or a “silver luxury” for 
her pastor’s dinner table. 

Although courtesy fulfills the definition of a fine art in 
that it is “primarily designed to make others happy” and 
in that it is “unselfish,” as all great art is, it often proves 
to be a very practical art, as illustrated in the strange 
story told by Mrs. James Hoover, of Borneo. One day 
when her missionary husband was away from their little 
home in the tropical wilderness, Mrs. Hoover was terrified 
to see from her window a group of massive head hunters 
surrounding the house. Her first inspiration was to try 
the weapon of courtesy, so, sitting down at the little organ, 
she began to play hymns. Fascinated by the new sounds, 
the natives sat down in a circle and, before long, nodding 
like children to the rhythm of a lullaby, they were fast 
asleep. 

Grote judged by individuals.—It is a tendency of all of 


118 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


us to generalize from some one or two outstanding experi- 
ences. If you have found one specially courteous sales- 
girl do you not patronize that store? or avoida Y. W. C. A. 
in a city where some temporary office helper was indifferent 
to your needs? A woman who is nationally known in 
advertising circles as one of the very few business women 
with an earning capacity of ten thousand dollars a year, 
in an address to the Brooklyn Business and Professional 
Women’s Association, said there is no gainsaying the fact 
that women in business, like all the rest of the world’s 
women, do not play the game; they are not loyal to one 
another as men are, and at their first opportunity they 
ram down the throat of every man every adverse statement 
they have ever heard made against every other woman. 
Doctor Cadman takes an opposite point of view about the 
courtesy of women in business. “Buying a railroad ticket 
from a woman clerk is a pleasure; from a man, an experi- 
ence,” he declares. 

A cure for war.—Just as Jesus was recognized by his 
way of breaking bread in the house of his friends at. 
Emmaus, so is the real soul of a nation known by its way, 
of dealing with other peoples. Walter Hines Page, 
American’s wartime ambassador to Great Britain, writing 
to the President on October 25, 1913, called attention to 
America’s customary neglect of polite manners in nego- 
tiating little, unimportant dealings. Accumulating 
through generations these little rudenesses has made 
Kurope regard us as a nation thoughtless of the little fine 
arts of life. The more he saw of diplomatic customs 
abroad, the more important he considered the details of 
international courtesy. He even suggested, half in jest, 
to Colonel House, that we needed in Washington a master 
of courtesies and wrote to him on November 12, 1915, that 
he believed the first step toward peace was courtesy; and 
the second step was courtesy; and the third step a fine and 
high courtesy. He deplored our government’s way of ad- 
dressing nations with which we have much in common, 
not as old friends, but as strangers. Our communications 
to England he found not discourteous but wholly wn- 
courteous, which is worse. 

One of the most distinguished citizens of America’s 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 119 


Northwest—Justice Thomas Burke—died pleading for a 
more courteous method of communicating our will to for- 
eign nations. His last words, spoken at a meeting of the 
Carnegie Foundation for International Peace, were an 
expression of profound regret that Congress had unneces- 
sarily offended Japan in its method of handling Japanese 
exclusion when the desired results might have been just as 
well gained in a more courteous way. “I implore the coun- 
try to come to a realization of the greater value in foreign 
relations of good manners and kindly courtesy,” he said 
and was stricken fatally before finishing his sentence. 
Might not the following slogan, posted in congested traffic 
centers, be suggested to nations as well: “Courtesy pro- 
motes safety—try wt’? 


QUESTIONS FOR Group Discussion 


1. How could you raise the good-cheer thermometer of 
your business place? 

2. If you came upon a girl in “the blues” how would you 
go about helping her? Would you take her out for a good 
time or get at the real basis for her depression? Which 
would be likely to produce the quicker result? 

3. Who is the most cheerful person you know? Has 
she more means than the average girl of her group? Has 
her life been consistently fortunate or punctuated by mis- 
fortunes ? 

4. Do you find yourself so preoccupied with your own 
affairs that it is very difficult to interest yourself in the 
concerns of others? 

5. How can you reorganize your daily schedule to get 
in “a meditative moment”? Could you cultivate this mood 
while on your way to business? 

6. Do you find it difficult to concentrate on reading? 
How can you discipline yourself to enjoy books? 

%. Could you organize round-robin reading circles within 
your discussion group, each girl purchasing one book and 
passing it on to the others? To whom would you turn 
for advice about selecting worth-while books? Would you 
include more modern books or ones proved worthy of your 
time by the test of years? 

8. What is the danger of the dreamer? Show that it 


120 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


is not only possible to combine the temperaments of Mary 
and of Martha but necessary to do so if we are to live 
abundantly. 

9. Are you as punctilious as you expect others to be with 
you in the little courtesies, such as answering invitations, 
returning borrowed property, calling at times of illness, 
avoiding jostling in crowds, and pushing ahead of one’s 
turn in a line? 

10. What if other people fail to measure up when you 
extend courtesies? Ought you to “call them to time” or 
cease remembering them with greetings, gifts, and other 
attentions? Unless you really care for them should you 
go “the second mile” ? 

11. If a friend injures you ought you to go frankly and 
demand an apology or avoid contacts with her? 

12. Think of the most charming person you know. 
Enumerate the elements of her appeal to you. 

13. Is it easier to be courteous to “inferiors” or to those 
who are your superiors in business? 

14. What “courtesy methods” does your firm employ 
as regards relation and good will of employees to one 
another? as regards service to the public? What addi- 
tional courtesies would you suggest? 

15. Should a woman employee consider her men col- 
leagues impolite if, in group conferences about business, 
they do not rise when she enters or offer her a chair or 
ask her permission to smoke? When she demands equality 
of opportunity should she expect the old measure of 
chivalry to be accorded her? What do you think of the 
statement a man recently made: “It’s awfully hard to be 
gallant to a flapper’? Why does he feel that way? Do 
girls want courtesy? Why is it that young women often 
turn down men friends of refinement and choose ones 
“coarser in the fiber’? How much responsibility have 
girls for establishing the courtesy code of their circle of 
acquaintance? Does the same man often have different 
standards of personal conduct when with different women ? 

16. Do you have any foreign-born acquaintances to 
whom you can interpret a friendly Christian America by 
your own courtesy of attitude? 


CHAPTER IX 


LIFE’S DISAPPOINTMENTS—HOW SHALL I 
FACHK THEM? 


A YOUNG woman who was teaching school and happily 
filling her hope chest with treasures for the home that was 
soon to be established suddenly found herself overwhelmed 
by a catastrophe that bore down upon her soul like a de- 
vouring beast. Her fiancé, a brilliant young Christian, 
had worked his way through college with a Phi Beta 
Kappa record. After patiently helping younger brothers 
to complete their education he had obtained an assistant 
professorship in a State university and was saving a snug 
little nest egg for the future home when seized with a 
fatal streptococcus infection. The letter written by his 
sweetheart in response to an expression of sympathy from 
her Bible class lays bare her soul’s response to one of the 
most tragic disappointments which can come to any young | 
woman: 


My Drar GIRLS: 

I want to thank you for your genuine sympathy. Words 
at a time like this seem of little comfort, yet the assurance 
of your love does make me feel a bit better. 

Life seems so hopeless now. All the dreams, the hopes, the 
ambitions, that Walter and I had are never to be realized! 
At times I wonder how I shall ever bear such a crushing sor- 
row. Just why this had to happen, when life seemed so full 
of happiness for both of us, I cannot understand. But I am 
trying hard to remember that God is infinitely wise. And 
when the visions of our home, which will never be, arise to 
taunt me, I force myself to remember that we are eternity- 
bound creatures. 

I’m glad that I knew and loved Walter, and his serene, 
modest, unassuming life will always be a hallowed memory 
and benediction to me. God grant that I may find consolation 
in the love of our Father in heaven—TI need it. 


The sorrow of this young woman is only one of a host of 
disappointments that are coming daily to girls in every 


121 


122 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


land. The strong faith it called forth in her case is defi- 
nitely inspiring. Let us see whether we can find in the 
New Testament any record showing how women who had 
actual contact with the living Christ and his disciples met 
the crushing disappointments that crashed down upon 
them. 

DISAPPOINTED FRIENDS OF JESUS 


Luke 8. 1-3. 

And it came to pass soon afterwards, that he went about 
through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good 
tidings of the kingdom of God, and with him the twelve, 
and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and 
infirmities: Mary that was called Magdalene, from whom 
seven demons had gone out, and Joanna the wife of Chuzas 
Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, who min- 
istered unto them of their substance. 


Luke 23. 27-31, 55, 56. 

And there followed him a great multitude of the people, and 
of women who bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turn- 
ing unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, 
but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For behold, 
the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed are the 
barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the breasts that 
never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the moun- 
tains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do 
these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry? 
... And the women, who had come with him out of Galilee, 
followed after and beheld the tomb, and how his body was laid. 
And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments. 

And on the sabbath they rested according to the command- 
ment. 


Luke 24. 1-7. 

But on the first day of the week, at an early dawn, they 
came unto the tomb, bringing the spices which they had pre 
pared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. 
And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord 
Jesus. And it came to pass, while they were perplexed there- 
about, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel: 
and as they were affrighted and bowed down their faces to 
the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among 
the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he 
spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying that the 
Son of man must be delivered up into the hands of sinful 
men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. 


Acts 1. 14. 
These all with one accord continued stedfastly in prayer, 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 123 


with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with 
his brethren. 


BEREAVEMENT 


The world’s womanhood has never witnessed a greater 
disappointment than that which befell the group of min- 
istering women who followed Christ through the crowded 
days of his public ministry; for, coupled with sorrow for 
the death of their first wholly sympathetic friend, came the 
collapse of the dream that had induced them, as well as 
the men disciples, to “leave all and follow him.” What 
this meant in a day when the freedom of women was 
largely restricted to their own homes, to the paths that 
led to village wells, and to certain portions of the sanctuary, 
it is hard for us to imagine. Only some great, impelling 
motive, such as gratitude for the healing of their own or 
loved ones’ infirmities, or for the casting out of “evil 
spirits,” bad tempers, and surly dispositions could have 
induced them to bear the jibes and taunts of a cynical 
world, which was always prompt to put the worst interpre- 
tation upon women’s motives. 

The hope that gave worth to life. oY Althouah some of 
those who “ministered unto them of their substance” were 
prominent, as, for example, Joanna, the wife of Herod’s 
steward, and Salome, the wife of Zebedee, many of them 
are heroines as unnamed and as unknown as the mysterious 
warriors who sleep at Arlington, in Westminster Abbey, 
and under the Parisian Arc de Triomphe. They are just 
referred to as “many other women’’—the sort who to-day 
would be side-aisle Christians—folks who sit in the less 
prominent places of the church, seeking not public recog- 
nition but simply a chance to serve in their own sincere 
way; not asking, like the sons of Zebedee, for a con- 
spicuous place in the Kingdom but finding ‘sufficient re- 
ward in the success of his plans. These unnamed women 
of faith were in the first century, and are still in the 
twentieth, the living stones upon which the church is 
built. 

So sure had the disciples been of Christ?s imminent 
recognition as Messiah that their disappointment over his 
arrest and condemnation by Herod was staggering. In- 


124 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


stead of the happy words of commendation usually spoken 
by kings to their faithful followers on coronation day these 
were the ominous words that fell upon their ears: 
“Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for 
yourselves, and for your children. For behold, the days 
are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed are the 
barren, . . . ‘Then shall they begin to say to the 
mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.” 

The courage of a worthy life—How thrilling are the 
words that tell how the disappointed women met their 
catastrophe! It is picturesque, faithful Luke who gives 
us the climax record: the women, who had come with him 
out of Galilee, followed after and “beheld the tomb 
returned and prepared spices and ointments.” In other 
words, they looked their sorrow squarely in the face and 
met it with an act of further faith and service. There was 
no betrayal, as with Judas; no denial, as with Peter; no 
skepticism as in Thomas’ case; no loud tumult of lament, 
as with the paid mourners who bewailed with uproar the 
young daughter of Jairus. These women met the chal- 
lenge of disappointment with the silent dignity of more 
service. 

Some people cannot stand up under sorrow because they 
refuse to face it frankly. A certain woman whose hus- 
band died before she could reach the hospital was so pros- 
trated that she could not look upon his body. She ordered 
the body taken to a funeral parlor and brought to her 
home only on the evening of the service. What would 
you say was the matter with this woman? 

Finding comfort in service—How inspiring are the 
lives of those who, like the women of Christ’s company, 
behold the tomb and return to prepare spices and oint- 
ments! Madame Marie Sklodowska Curie, discoverer of 
the most wonderful substance of healing known to modern 
medicine, was happily at work one day in 1906, administer- 
ing the humble household of her professor husband and 
two daughters; and giving her whole soul to collaboration 
with Monsieur Curie in the study of the two elements they 
had discovered—polonium and radium. Suddenly a mes- 
senger called her to the door and told her that her hus- 
band had been killed by a wagon on his way to the uni- 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 125 


versity. The terrible blow of losing him who was both 
father of her daughters and dearest colleague in the 
science that made them more than husband and wife seri- 
ously impaired her health; but even her irreparable loss 
did not deter her from the beneficent studies that were 
blessing all mankind. 

So persistently did she lean over her microscope that 
she was called to succeed Monsieur Curie at the Faculty of 
Science. ‘Then, in 1911 she won the Nobel Prize for 
Chemistry and later was instrumental in establishing the 
Radium Institute for Research in connection with the great 
Pasteur Institute of Paris. When the war broke out, she 
offered herself to the governmental school of radiology to 
train one hundred and fifty girl operators. Sometimes she 
accompanied the ambulances of the radiological auxiliary 
to the French Medical Service, whose prompt action saved 
the lives of many of the wounded. So great was the serv- 
ice of this woman scientist, who bent her God-given talent 
not to the destruction but to the saving of human life, 
that she was given an ovation by the women of America 
and presented by President Harding with a gramme of 
radium on their behalf. It is hard to estimate how much 
the sufferings of the world have been reduced because of 
this noble woman who “beheld the tomb . . . and 
returned and prepared spices.” 

There have been few more devoted royal couples than 
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the shy young Ger- 
man who rose from the obscure role of a “foreigner” disin- 
terested in England’s politics to the position where a na- 
tion was at his feet. Victoria adored him, and he was 
ever a princely lover, gallantly relieving her of as many 
irksome duties as possible by rising early to get her offi- 
cial mail and messages in shape. His death brought para- 
lyzing grief, but the resolution of her girlhood, recorded 
in her journal on the day of her coronation, sustained her. 
“Since it has pleased Providence to place me in this sta- 
tion,” then wrote the eighteen-year-old queen, “TI shall do 
my utmost to fulfill my duty toward my country. . 

I am sure that very few have more real desire to do what 
is fit and right than I have.” Her “will to be good” 
stamped itself on the remaining years of her long reign 


126 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


and upon the whole period, which is named for her “the 
Victorian Age.” 

While Mrs. William Perry Eveland was spending her 
furlough from missionary duty in Malaysia in the moun- 
tains of Pennsylvania, her husband—Bishop Eveland— 
failed to return one rainy night from a fishing trip, with 
which he sought to refresh his body, tired to the breaking 
point with work in the Orient. At dawn a lad found him, 
dead, near a high-power electric wire, which had come 
into contact with his steel fishing rod. Mrs. Eveland, 
childless, shocked, with loneliness and grief, refused to live 
the quiet life of ease her sisters suggested but instead 
plunged deeper than ever into work for Malaysia. Here 
is a recent statement of the work of the Women’s Foreign 
Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church: 
“Sixteen missionaries of the peninsular and island fields 
were brought to the platform by Mrs, Eveland—one third 
of the whole number for that entire field, whose popula- 
tion is sixty millions.” It indicates the scope of the serv- 
ice to which she dedicated herself more fully than ever 
when “she beheld the tomb . . . and returned and 
prepared spices.” 

Possibly more poignant than even the grief for a fiancé 
or a husband is a woman’s sorrow for a lost child. A 
young Philadelphia matron, mourning for her little girl 
as those that have no hope, was strangely blessed by a 
dream, which is a modern parable for those who weep. 
Prostrated with grief, she threw herself upon the bed 
and sobbed herself to sleep. And lo! a great procession of 
people passed before her, arrayed in white and making as 
if they were on their way to a high festival. She noticed 
that each one lifted aloft a lighted candle, which illumi- 
nated the face of Christ. One by one the mother scanned 
them, looking for her Mary. At last a child’s sweet 
figure came along with the procession. Her little arm 
was upraised, but her candle was not lighted. “Mary, light 
your candle, dear!” exclaimed the mother. “The others 
are all burning.” And the child replied, “I did light it, 
mother, but your tears keep putting it out.” With a start 
the young woman awoke and returned to the room where 
the father sat alone. Her face was so aglow with smiles 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 127 


that he at first thought she was beside herself. And from 
that day to this her parable of the tear-extinguished candle 
has gone out to many in sorrow and been applied as oint- 
ment to many a grieving mother heart. 


BrRoKEN PLANS 


Reverse of fortune——It is Goethe who said that “sor- 
row’s crown of sorrows is remembering happier days.” 
Is financial loss likely to entail a loss of faith? The 
Baroness Leja de Torinoff had from girlhood felt a sym- 
pathy for the unprivileged peasants of Russia akin to that 
of Count Tolstoy; but, although heiress to several estates, 
she was powerless to improve their condition because of 
the criticism of neighboring nobility. So, with a dis- 
couraged fatalism, she succumbed to the conventional Rus- 
sian outlook upon society and religion. The first year of 
the war took her husband. Troops were quartered in her 
loveliest castle. Her only child was interned in Germany, 
and she counted herself fortunate in making a providential 
escape to America. But her exodus from prosperity to 
want proved to be a transition from spiritual Siberia to 
salvation; for to-day, as an American citizen and devout 
Protestant of warmly evangelical faith, she counts her lost 
prosperity as nothing compared with her present satisfac- 
tion in going up and down America, singing and telling 
the story of Christ’s leading and his amazing care for 
her and her daughter. 

Closed doors—and open roads.—Alberta Lee set her 
heart upon going to Malaysia as a missionary nurse and 
completed her three-year course in a Methodist hospital. 
At last the day came when she could offer herself to the 
Board of Foreign Missions. But she was rejected because 
her elementary education had been deficient. When, a few 
months later, she recovered from the shock, she enrolled 
for special night courses in Columbia University, carried 
this work along with supervision of hospital dispensary 
cases, and ultimately became superintendent of nurses in 
a great city hospital, where she exerted a profound reli- 
gious influence over the hundreds of young nurses pour- 
ing into the training school from country communities. 

Mary Ann Evans, as a girl on her father’s farm in 


128 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


Warwickshire, England, in the 1820s felt herself so ham- 
pered by limited educational opportunities and so disap- 
pointed at being born a girl that when, at the age of 
thirty-seven, she submitted her first novel to a publisher, 
she signed herself by the nom de plume “George Eliot.” 
In her Daniel Deronda she said, “You may try but you 
can never imagine what it is to have a man’s force of 
genius in you and yet to suffer the slavery of being a 
girl”? How wonderfully she freed herself, even in her 
day, from this handicap is shown by the intensive studies 
she made for Romola, which she says she began as a girl 
and finished as an old woman. In preparation for writing 
Daniel Deronda she is said to have read a thousand vyol- 
umes. 

Physical handicaps.—Literature is full of instances of 
writers who have been spurred on by invalidism to accom- 
plish astonishingly fruitful labors. From Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning to Nellie Revell and Beckie Tabor of our day 
we can trace the triumph of spirit over physical suffering. 
It is said of Sidney Lanier, whose life was a ceaseless 
battle with ill health and adversity, that he wrote his 
master poem “Sunrise” when too feeble to raise food to 
his mouth and with a temperature of 104, fearful lest he 
should die before he had finished the poem. ‘The late 
Joseph Conrad, feeling his strength waning, goaded him- 
self on toward the completion of his novel Suspense, dur- 
ing the final weeks of his life. Painfully he wrote, dictat- 
ing at the same time, so that someone else might type the 
manuscript. 

Helen Keller, having won her own victory over terrific 
physical handicaps, wrote to a little girl in Brooklyn hope- 
lessly crippled in an accident: 


I have just read in the newspaper about your accident and 
I feel I simply must write to you. I am very, very sorry. 
My heart is full of sympathy and love for the dear, brave 
little girl who is bearing everything with such sweetness and 
courage. All my life I have had unusual obstacles to over- 
come and in spite of them I have found life beautiful. lL 
have been able to do something for myself and others. You 
too, dear Fanny, will learn to find beauty and happiness in 
the world. Grief and pain are but the soil from which springs 
the lovely plant unselfishness. Be gentle and learn how to 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 129 


suffer. When one suffers patiently one suffers less. ... Be- 
lieve me, dear, the future is shaped out of the past. What- 
ever you can do to live bravely, without impatience and with- 
out complaining, will help you to live some future day in joy- 
ful contentment. When trouble first comes, we do not know 
what to do with it. We are bewildered; but after a little 
while we learn our new part—the thing we can do best—and 
we take up the task God puts into our hands with a smile in 
our hearts. I am sending you the story of my life because I 
hope it may encourage you. You will see that even deafness 
and blindness are obstacles that can be overcome. 


A little lame daughter in an Ohio Methodist parson- 
age was helped through friends to undergo an operation 
enabling her to walk; but she remained terribly crippled 
and resentful because she could not engage in a normal 
girl’s activities with her friends. Then her wise father 
interested her in becoming a superior scholar. She was 
able to complete her college course and do graduate special- 
ization and is to-day a brilliant member of the faculty of 
a large woman’s college. She is admired for the transcend- 
ent beauty of her face, honored for the glowing quality of 
her mind, and loved for her genius for friendship. ° 

Potencies unfulfilled.—Statistics show that there are 
proportionately more single women in the United States 
now than in colonial times. Is economic independence the 
explanation? Is it a matter of choice? Or is society to 
blame for not providing adequate means for young people 
to meet their own kind legitimately? This was the sub- 
ject of a spirited discussion at a recent college reunion. 
What do you think about it? 

A survey of eminent American women revealed the fact 
that only half of them were married. We have only to 
think of a Jane Addams or a Lilian Wald in the settle- 
ment world, or of a Julia Stimpson in the nursing pro- 
fession, or of the late Amy Lowell in the world of letters 
to realize what some of America’s “surplus celibates” 
(whether by choice or necessity) have accomplished. The 
majority of America’s four hundred thousand school 
teachers are single. Much of the vast missionary en- 
deavor of the world is carried on by those who will never 
know a home of their own. The worlds of science and 
invention are tenanted by women who in other days might 


130 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


have been lonely spinsters dreaming, in Myrtle Reed fash- 
ion, of “lavendar and old lace.” 

Lady Astor has called our attention to the fact that 
much of the benevolent work of the world is being carried 
on by spinsters, who “expand” as they grow older. She 
thinks that in contrast bachelors tend to “contract” and 
grow narrow, selfish, and crotchety. There are certainly 
“old maids” of both sexes. Perhaps fewer men than 
women who remain single find or make for themselves 
intimate affections through which to spend their energies 
in that daily exercise of unselfish service which normally 
comes in the demands of marriage and parenthood. In our 
day as never before the thousand doors of the house of serv- 
ice are flung wide to give opportunities to girls who are 
for one reason or another deprived of a romantic experi- 
ence. The records of an Isabella Thoburn, founding a col- 
lege for girls of India, and of Mary Reed, ministering to 
her leper colony, are thrilling spiritual romances. 

The disappointment of childless homes.—Many women 
who would make far better mothers than many who are 
such are finding satisfaction for their instincts in caring 
for unmothered children of the world. Helen Gould 
Shepard has adopted a few children to do her share of 
mothering the forlorn boys and girls of the world. ‘There 
are college women in almost every class who are doing this. 
Even on the mission fields, where salaries are meager for 
the support of even one individual, women are adopting 
native children. Thus, by feeding the hungry, clothing 
the naked, mothering those who are motherless, they are 
inheriting the kingdom prepared for them from the foun- 
dation of the world. 

Even where it is not advisable to adopt children much 
joy can be derived in the service of the pitiful troop of 
orphans. A certain young woman whose heart was full 
of unclaimed love of child life was one day driving past 
the little hospital building of a home for children. “Could 
anything be more pathetic,” she exclaimed, “than to be 
both ill and parentless?” Just then a thin little arm ap- 
peared at a window as it turned the page of a scrap book 
on the hospital cot. It was an unconscious S O S eall,, 
which the young woman heeded, and an invitation to a 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 131 


ministry that has continued for years with an inestimable 
return of joy. Many boys and girls in their teens are 
quite as much in need of mothering as are these little 
children, and the single woman who is meeting and solv- 
ing problems similar to theirs—whether of lonesomeness 
or disappointment or temptation—can have a truly crea- 
tive share in the next generation if she loves unselfishly. 
The same motives animate many of the splendid women 
of culture and means who go year after year to Doctor 
Grenfell’s many-sided missions in the Labrador, paying 
their own expenses and receiving no salary, just for the 
privilege of making the blind see, the crooked straight, 
and the orphaned “no longer desolate.” 


THE SECRET 


Have you ever wondered why the ministering women 
who were friends of Jesus in the first century—and since 
—were able to “behold the tomb” and then to return and 
prepare spices? A single verse in Acts 1 explains it: 
“They all with one accord continued steadfastly in prayer, 
with the women, and: Mary the mother of Jesus, and with 
his brethren.” If the women continued in prayer, it must 
have been habitual with them. Nothing can continue that 
has not previously existed. ‘Those who pray in time of 
prosperity will find it their stay in hours of adversity. 
These loyal women who refused to be separated from the 
Master even by death had fulfilled his requirements for 
discipleship; had for his sake left houses, brethren, sisters, 
father, mother, children, lands, and had received the “hun- 
dredfold” promised. Their heritage from Christ was not 
only the assurance of eternal life but the stamina that en- 
abled them to stand all the discouragements that lay this 
side of eternity. 


QUESTIONS FoR Group DIscussION 


1. Tell, if you are willing, of the greatest disappoint- 
ment you ever experienced. What was its immediate effect 
upon (a) your disposition; (b) your religious faith; (c) 
your subsequent life? 

2. Have most of the disappointments of your life been 


132 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


due to circumstances outside your control or to factors 
within your own life? 

3. Have you any passages in the Bible to which you 
habitually turn for encouragement? How about Deuter- 
onomy 33. 25; Isaiah 40. 31; 1 Corinthians 15. 58; Ro- 
mans 15. 13? 

4, How can one increase his ability to sympathize with 
disappointed or bereaved friends? 

5. Can you mention any instances, in literature or life, 
in which persons have definitely turned acute disappoint- 
ment to constructive ends? 

6. If a friend has disappointed you in failing to measure 
up to your ideal for him, what is to be done? 

%. If you feel disappointed with your own character, 
what Bible passages will you select as the foundation for 
the new structure? 1 Corinthians 10. 13; James 1. 12; 1 
John 2. 1-3? 


CHAPTER X 
TO WHOM AM I NEIGHBOR? 


PRAYER FOR FREEDOM From RacE PREJUDICE 


Gop, who hast made man in thine own likeness and who 
dost love all whom thou hast made, suffer us not, because of 
difference in race, color, or condition, to separate ourselves 
from others and thereby from thee; but teach us the unity of 
thy family and the universality of thy love. 

As thy Son, our Saviour, was born of a Hebrew mother and 
ministered first to his brethren of the house of Israel but 
rejoiced in the faith of a Syrophenician woman and of a 
Roman soldier, and suffered his cross to be carried by a man 
of Africa: teach us, also, while loving and serving our own, 
to enter into the communion of the whole human family; and 
forbid that, from pride of birth and hardness of heart, we 
should despise any for whom Christ died, or injure any in 
whom he lives. Amen. 


The word “neighbor” has undergone an interesting evo- 
Jution with the progress of the ages. With several illumi- 
nating passages of Scripture before us let us consider the 
real meaning of neighborliness for us as twentieth-century 
persons. 


NEIGHBORS 


One who is near at hand.— 


Luke 1. 57, 58. 

Now Elisabeth’s time was fulfilled that she should be de- 
livered; and she brought forth a son. And her neighbors and 
her kinsfolk heard that the Lord had magnified his mercy 
towards her; and they rejoiced with her. 


Luke 15. 3-6, 8, 9. 

And he spake unto them this parable, saying, What man of 
you, having a hundred sheep, and having lost one of them, 
doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go 
after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath 
found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when 
he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and his 
neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me, for I have 


1Mornay Williams; used by permission. 


133 


134 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


found my sheep which was lost. ... Or what woman having 
ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a 
lamp, and sweep the house, and seek diligently until she find 
it? And when she hath found it, she calleth together her 
friends and neighbors, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have 
found the piece which I had lost. 


John 9. 7%, 8. 


He went away therefore, and washed, and came seeing. The 
neighbors therefore, and they that saw him aforetime, that he 
was a beggar, said, Is not this he that sat and begged? 


One who satisfies a need.— 


Luke 10. 29-33, 36. 


But he, desiring to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And 
who is my neighbor? Jesus made answer and said, A certain 
man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho; and he fell 
among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and de- 
parted, leaving him half dead. And by chance a certain priest 
was going down that way: and when he saw him, he passed 
by on the other side. And in like manner a Levite also, when 
he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other 
side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where 
he was: and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion. 
... Which of these three, thinkest thou, proved neighbor 
unto him that fell among the robbers? 


A member of the world family of the Father.— 


Matthew 15. 21-28. 


And Jesus went out thence, and withdrew into the parts of 
Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanitish woman came out 
from those borders, and cried, saying, Have mercy on me, O 
Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed 
with a demon. But he answered her not a word. And his 
disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for 
she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I was not sent 
but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But she came 
and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. And he an- 
swered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread 
and cast it to the dogs. But she said, Yea, Lord: for even 
the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table. 
Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is 
thy faith: be it done unto thee even as thou wilt. And her 
daughter was healed from that hour. 


The marks of a good neighbor.— 


Matthew 22. 37-39. 


And he said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 135 


mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second 
like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 
Ephesians 4. 25-27. 

Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak ye the truth each 
one with his neighbor: for we are members one of another. 
Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your 
wrath: neither give place to the devil. 

James 4. 12. 


One only is the lawgiver and judge, even he who is able to 
save and to destroy: but who art thou that judgest thy 
neighbor? 


THE ENLARGING NEIGHBORHOOD 


Near neighbors.—The simplest possible conception of 
neighbor is expressed in the first group of Scripture passages 
quoted above where one idea is that of being near geographi- 
cally. The neighbors mentioned as rejoicing with right- 
eous Elisabeth over the birth of her son—John the Bap- 
tist—form a pleasing, folkish background for this beauti- 
ful incident, just as the community forms the human set- 
ting for the episodes of a great pageant. They are the 
same sort of neighbors as those mentioned in the parable 
of the woman who lost one piece of silver and the neigh- 
bors of the man who, having lost his hundredth sheep, 
found it. It was the folks who lived adjacent to him that 
the father of the prodigal son invited to make merry over 
his boy’s return. And it was because the people who were 
close at hand were such poor neighbors that the blind man 
at the pool of Siloam could not get into the healing waters. 
It was never difficult in the Orient to summon a caucus of 
neighbors. They sprang up on every occasion, either 
through curiosity or for mutual defense. Down through 
the centuries, as late as medieval days, cities were just 
overgrown neighborhoods. In the walled towns of that 
fascinating age, when people shut themselves within battle- 
ments of stone and circling moats, and their very existence 
depended on their hanging together, mere proximity kept 
them neighbors. 

But when the prosperous towns and free cities began to 
expand with the widening commercial horizons of the fif- 
teenth century, and with the industrial revolution, which 
came with the use of machinery from the eighteenth cen- 


136 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


tury on, neighbors became less and less essential in the 
life of the individual. To-day, when city areas are made 
up of huge apartments and hotels whose vast population, 
shops, offices, and subway entrances make them towns in 
themselves, it is possible to live for years without having 
the slightest neighborly contact with those on the opposite 
side of an eight-inch wall. The neighborhood to-day is 
shown to be made up of those who have common inter- 
ests, regardless of thewr place of residence. 'The old defini- 
tion of neighbor as one who is near at hand is obsolete, but 
in outgrowing its original meaning it is taking on a new 
and deeper significance. 

Needy neighbors.—In the parable of the good Samari- 
tan the neighbor is described as one willing and able to 
meet the need of an ill-fated brother-traveler. The nephew 
of Scrooge, in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, possessed this 
generous genius. It is just the opposite of Thackeray’s 
picture when he said, “How lonely we are—a pair of in- 
finite isolations, with some fellow islands a little more 
or less near to us!” Now nations, in the sense of the folks 
who make them up, are learning to be neighbors in each 
other’s need. Recall the heroic work of the various coun- 
tries of Europe, even while they themselves were crippled 
and destitute, to take care of the refugees, the children, 
and the sick from other nations. You all know the work 
of the Near East Relief. On behalf of the thousands of 
refugee orphans America must continue to be moved with 
compassion, bind wp wounds, pour on them oil and wine, 
set broken bodies on beasts of progress, give many shillings 
for their care to the inn keeper, and, when that is spent, 
come back and repay it again. 

An example of neighborliness on a large scale is the 
Rockefeller Foundation. Its marvelous work includes 
hastening progress in medical schools in this country, 
England, Siam, and China. Hookworm disease, malaria, 
tuberculosis, yellow fever, it has combated in many lands. 
Its budget has contributed to rural health campaigns, pro- 
vided for 864 fellowships in 33 nations in one year, given 
funds to the education of nurses at Yale, and maintained 
a modern medical school at Peking. 

The medical program of the modern missionary enter- 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 13% 


prise corresponds to the Samaritan’s binding up of wounds. 
Its economic improvements (such as Sam Higginbottom’s 
agricultural experiments with waste land in India and the 
transformation of African jungle space into vegetable 
gardens) correspond to the giving of “shillings,” and 
orphanages are modern “inns” to befriend the lonely way- 
farers of the world. 

Different neighbors.—But loftier than the definition of 
neighbor as one who is near at hand and even nobler than 
its conception as one who meets a fellow’s need is the 
subtler idea suggested by the incident of Christ and the 
Canaanitish or Syrophcnician woman. Here was a for- 
eigner, a Syrian by descent, speaking Greek and living in 
Pheenicia, who insisted upon wresting her share of Christ’s 
feast of spiritual power even if only the crumbs were her 
portion. Her story is more than a revelation of the great 
Neighbor answering the cry of an anxious mother. It 
forms a New Testament background for our whole Chris- 
tian attitude toward races other than our own. Its mes- 
sage is the same as the one that came in Peter’s vision, 
which prepared him to minister to a Gentile centurion. 
Jesus and Peter, both by blood and education, were ardent 
Jews. An inbred preference for their own race had been 
stamped upon their nation’s consciousness ever since they 
were forbidden to intermarry with the Canaanites as a 
safeguard against defilement of their religion. With this 
in mind let us consider the incident of the Canaanitish 
woman. 

Jesus had just been trying to explain to the Pharisees 
and his own disciples the distinction between the cere- 
monial cleanness of washed hands and the real purity of a 
heart whose motives are wholly noble. He was exhausted 
with the fatigue that comes to every ardent preacher who 
tries to persuade an argumentative, hostile, uncompre- 
hending audience. And for respite he “went away into 
the borders of Tyre and Sidon.” It was far from his 
intention to preach the world an object lesson in interna- 
tional neighborliness. But the Canaanitish woman dis- 
covered him by her mother wit and so insistently demanded 
his healing for her daughter that she proved positively 
annoying to the disciples. Jesus refused firmly at first to 


138 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


grant her request because he understood that the Father’s 
will for his life was to bring a message to his own race 
first. His principle was that of “concentration” for the 
sake of a later expansion of his message. As Doctor 
Cadman recently expressed it, one cannot swing around 
the circumference of a circle without first striking the 
center. | 

To understand this passage the play of words must be 
taken into consideration. The word Christ used for dogs 
signifies the little household pet, or “doggie,” which hides 
under the table to pick up choice tidbits, rather than the 
repellent sort of scavenger dog, which prowls about Orien- 
tal streets. The woman was quick to claim the share that 
even the “doggie” has in the family meal. By this turn 
of meaning she proved her right to Christ’s healing power. 
Her faith was irresistible and led him to go beyond the 
bounds he had felt set for his ministry at that hour. With 
verses 21-28 before you tabulate all the characteristics of 
this “foreign-born mother” which appear there. Her devo- 
tion to the daughter “possessed of an evil spirit” (verse 
22), her persistence (verse 23), her reverence (verse 25), 
her humility (verse 25), her cleverness (verse 27), and 
her supreme quality of faith crowned by Christ’s spoken 
acknowledgment of it (verse 28)—are there any other 
traits ? 


WorxLD NEIGHBORS 


The fact that Jesus, a Jew, found the divinely ordered 
plan for his life modified to meet the need of a foreigner 
gives us the best possible basis for considering world 
neighborliness. He himself doubtless rejoiced that the 
obstacle which held back his help was removed. No better 
figure has ever been devised to express international rela- 
tions than the one Christ had in mind on that occasion— 
a family, with elders, children, and pets gathered around 
the table. Common origins, common characteristics, com- 
mon sonship of one Father, have been admitted by many 
thinkers; but the nations of the world have not yet under- 
stood its challenge to fellowship. 

Both sincere internationalist and ardent nationalist.— 
Do you feel yourself stirred by the “superpatriotism” of 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 139 


humanity, for whose sake Edith Cavell laid down her life? 
Neighborliness of the highest type—spiritual kinship—is 
operating to-day at International House. That beautifully 
equipped building on Riverside Drive, New York City, is 
a hostel for more than five hundred students from nearly 
sixty lands. In addition it is headquarters for 1,250 mem- 
bers of the Intercollegiate Cosmopolitan Club, representing 
70 nations—Liberia, Gold Coast, Turkey, Persia, and 
many other remote corners of the globe. There it is not 
uncommon to see girls from Bolivia sipping tea in the 
cozy “home room” with friends from China, India, Japan, 
or Ozecho-Slovakia. This practical experiment in interna- 
tional neighborliness best expresses its spirit in the sym- 
bolic candle service held annually. Each representative of 
a nation, in costume, lights the taper of his neighbor, say- 
ing, “I represent —————.” When all the lights are 
ablaze in the auditorium, seating one thousand girls and 
men, the ceremony is concluded with the words: “As light 
begets light, so love, service, and good will are passed on 
to others.” ‘The same message appears on one of the two 
seals emblazoned on the walls of the room. On the other 
is the motto: “That Brotherhood May Prevail.” The stu- 
dents’ system of self-government is a daring innovation 
and an inspiring suggestion of the confidence that must be 
brought to play among nations whose standards of morality 
are widely divergent. Society and the power of public 
opinion are the only checks upon conduct. Poor citizen- 
ship in International House ostracizes the offender. Harry 
Edmonds, director and inspirer of the building, says the 
principle of self-government works out very successfully. 
These students came willing to accept the crumbs under 
America’s table, but through the generous spirit of a 
Christian citizen they are sharing the children’s bread. 

Alexandra K. escaped with her father from burning 
Smyrna and came to America. Gaining a humble clerical 
position, going to college at night for expert accountant 
courses, laundering her scant wardrobe at one and two 
o’clock in the morning in the Young Women’s Christian 
Association dormitory, where she lodged, she was just able 
to get along. 

“How do you like America?’ someone asked her. 


140 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


“Oh, everyone is so different here from the Christians 
I knew at the college in Smyrna. I thought they would 
all be like that. And oh, at business—well, I’m terribly 
disappointed !” 

A Japanese student had a different experience: 


When I first went to Vassar, the original national trait of 
the Japanese—reserve—kept me from expressing my whole 
self. At the beginning of my first summer holiday I went to 
the Young Women’s Christian Association student conference 
at Silver Bay. I never dreamed-that such a change was coming 
to me. The beautiful place, with lovely mountains and lake, 
inspiring speeches, interesting discussions, and jolly sports, 
was fascinating; but the greatest and most wonderful thing 
to me was the inexpressibly warm, lovely atmosphere that 
pervaded the conference and the group of girls, so eager, 
intelligent, and friendly. In that natural, happy fellowship 
I was no longer the critical, sensitive, passive self but I began 
to feel normal and to enjoy heartily my new experiences. I 
was so happy that my family could not believe me when I 
wrote such cheerful letters after the exclusion bill. 

The climax of my happiness came when I spent the re- 
mainder of my. first summer with the family of my best Amer- 
ican friend. There I was treated not merely as a friend but 
as a real daughter and sister. There I forgot entirely the dif- 
ference of nationality and experienced the real joy of being 
perfectly at home in America. 

When I went back to Vassar the next fall, the whole world 
looked different, and I enjoyed the work and friendship tre- 
mendously. 

Though my life in America is very shost, I feel so at home 
here that I often wonder why we have wars. From my expe- 
rience I know that we can know people of other countries so 
well that we feel no difference when we are with them. 


Are there any foreign students in your community whom 
you could introduce to Christian home life? Could you 
organize a “hospitality league” to entertain lonely for- 
eigners at Sunday tea? Do you know that the New York 
Bible Society distributes Scriptures in 67 languages, havy- 
ing given nearly a million copies to new immigrants in 
one year? Have you ever made any “reconciliation tours” 
among the foreign-born of your locality to become ac- 
quainted with their point of view? It may be possible to 
“oo around the world” in your own community. Clip from 
magazines items showing how young foreigners educated 


1 From the Woman’s Missionary Friend; used by permission. 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 141 


in the United States are being given places of leadership 
in their own land. 

World-neighborliness and world peace.—Which step 
should come first? Glenn Frank, president of the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin, says: “War, no matter how justifiable 
it may seem at the moment, is certainly a spiritual lia- 
bility, not an asset, to any people. It makes men unfit for 
procedures of peace and inspires no lasting literature of 
hope.” It is worth while to know and cooperate with all 
the forces making for peace and fellowship. There is the 
League for Intellectual Cooperation among the thinkers of 
the world. In this league the beneficent science of 
Madame Curie or Louis Pasteur, applied to the preserva- 
tion of human life, is in sharp contrast to the skill of 
machine-gun inventors and chemists bent on destroying 
humanity scientifically. In the Walter Hines Page School 
of International Relations, at Johns Hopkins University 
(planned as a tribute to the statesman who pleaded for 
courtesy among nations), one of the questions to be ex- 
plored is whether excessive industrial gain is a cause of 
war here. The work of the Sulgrave Committee of the 
Anglo-American Society, is to preserve such historic links 
between the two English-speaking countries as the ancestral 
home of George Washington and the old manor house 
where the British Committee for the Promotion of Anglo- 
American Friendship was formed. Then, there are the 
world cruises of individuals, the “floating universities” of 
students carrying on their studies as their ship carries 
them among the currents of world affairs, the foreign 
branches of American universities (such as New York 
University is providing in Paris), and several colleges such 
as Yale-in-China. 

For those who do not travel there are international radio 
programs, such as that historic broadcast on New Year’s 
Day, 1926, when to the Japanese consul’s greeting— 
“Citizens of the world, a happy new year to you”—were 
added messages from other statesmen in many tongues, 
and from its transoceanic wireless stations the Associated 
Press relayed to the world the events of that day, and 
people in three continents “listened in” and heard what 
the world was saying. Do you believe that the more we 


142 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


are acquainted with other nations the more we will esteem 
and respect them? A letter just drifted in from a little 
French woman, with whom a postwar correspondence had 
been maintained. After a silence of two years she was 
writing to tell of the arrival of a new baby, of the progress 
of her other child in school, of their participation in the 
Christmas play directed by the parish priest, of her own 
efforts to increase the family income by working in the 
fields with her husband, and a whole budget of heartsome, 
woman-to-woman chat. Could anything tend more to knit 
one nation to another than just this intimate personal cor- 
respondence between persons who have never seen each 
other and probably never will? We cannot hate these per- 
sons. The wholesale hatred of war is a dark phantom. 
During the war the Junior Red Cross sponsored such an 
intercourse between the children of the world. Why not 
resume it? Missionaries and others can arrange contacts. 

Women and the pursuit of peace.—Women’s organiza- 
tions are helping by the publication of such documents as 
Rhoda McCulloch’s and Margaret Burton’s On Earth 
Peace, a study book issued by a united committee on the 
study of missions; and Mrs. H. M. Swanwick’s Builders 
of Peace. Judge Florence Allen pleads for an interna- 
tional law, declaring war a crime and penalizing it under 
the laws of the nation. Get the March, 1925, issue of the 
Womans Press at your local Young Women’s Christian 
Association and gaze into the strong face of the poet- 
educator Gabriela Mistral, who says: 

Above the individual, like an ardent flame, floats the stand- 
ard of nationalism; above nationalism waves the banner of 
race; but, free and untrammeled, far above nationalism and 
race, streams the oriflamme of the Spirit; for the Spirit knows 
naught of limitations, which are consumed and annihilated in 
its ardent white flame.* 


The International Federation of University Women 
meets triennially, talking over aims and ideals in a frank 
and unembarrassed manner, although it seeks and receives 
very little publicity. Doha Bertha Lutz, of Brazil, a 
graduate of the Sorbonne in Paris, was elected president 
in 1925, and three of the other officers were chosen from 


1Copyright; used by permission. 





AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 143 


Latin-American countries. During the Conference on the 
Cause and Cure of War, called in Washington in January, 
1925, by nine national women’s organizations, women who 
were eminent in the world of sociology, religion, history, 
statesmanship, went to the bottom of the situations leading 
to war and considered proposals for solving international 
troubles by some other method than force. 


THE QUALIFICATIONS OF A Goop NEIGHBOR , 


Several suggestions lie in Scripture. Ephesians 4. 25 
emphasizes the necessity of truth between neighbors: 
“Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak ye truth each 
one with his neighbor: for we are members one of another.” 
This applies not only to false propaganda in times of war 
but to the easy flow of genuine information and enlighten- 
ment in the everyday intercourse of nations. The ac- 
companying injunction: “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not 
the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the 
devil” applies to countries as well as to individuals. The 
query of James: “Who art thou that judgest thy neighbor? 
One only is the law-giver and judge, even he who is able 
to save and to destroy” pricks our national conscience. 
How can we condemn the Burmese for making human 
sacrifices in the course of their animistic worship when 
sacrifices of human life are being made daily in American 
industry? or judge Japan guilty of exploiting Korea, or 
Belgium of committing atrocities in the rubber growing 
areas of the Congo, when Mexico is exploited by Ameri- 
can money? 

Christ’s own words, however, go to the very core of the 
matter: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Only 
when governments give to others the same consideration, 
courtesy, and portion of the world’s good things that they 
seek for themselves; and only when they admit that they 
are their “brother’s keeper” will the day come that 


“Man to man the warld o’er 
Shall brothers be for a’ that.” 


Four of Israel’s prophets speak of the Hebrew race as 
“mother.” ‘Tio every man his native land is motherland. 
And it is only when we treat and speak of other men’s 


144 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


lands with such respect as we would give to our own or 
other men’s mothers that the world’s history will read as 
Christ prays it will. When nations are willing to be as 
generous with their impoverished creditors as the few con- 
secrated persons who are sharing their incomes with 
partners on the other side of the world, and when coun- 
tries back up their cheap words with the costly gold of 
good will, we may expect to see the fulfillment of the 
great prophecy of Paul in his letter to the Christians at 
Ephesus: “So then ye are no more strangers and so- 
journers, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and 
of the household of God, being built upon the foundation 
of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being 
the chief corner stone; in whom each several building, fitly 
framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; 
in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of 
God in the Spirit.” 


QUESTIONS FoR Group Discussion 


1. What feature of Christ’s resurrection message (Mat- 
thew 28. 19, 20) clearly indicates that his plan was for the 
gospel to reach the last man and woman and child? What 
other incident can you mention as showing his broad sym- 
pathy with all races? (John 4.) 

2. Can you mention any modern “foreign mothers” 
whose constructive faith for their children was quite as 
insistent as that of the Syrophcenician woman? Read 
the autobiography of Michael Pupin, the autobiography 
of Andrew Carnegie, the early chapters of Dr. W. T. Gren- 
fell’s life, and Anizia Yzierska’s Hungering Hearts. 

3. Which do you find easier—to give money for the 
women of India or to be kindly in your everyday contacts 
with the foreign woman who cleans your office or launders 
your clothes? Are the elements of neighborliness the same 
in both instances? 

4. When the women of New York State work for a 
forty-eight-hour week for themselves and for children, are 
they in any sense being neighbor to the women who work 
under foul conditions in China? 

5. Do you find yourself particularly antagonistic toward 
people of any one race? Are they folks with whom you 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 145 


have had personal contact? Can you account for this 
prejudice? Has it any reasonable foundation? 

6. Are you an aggressive booster of your own race or 
do you, with Bishop Fisher of India, class the pretended 
superiority of the white races over the darker peoples of 
the earth as “Nordic nonsense”? Are you aware of the 
fact that almost every race has believed itself to be su- 
perior ? 

?. Is there any difference between a “backward” and 
an inferior race? 

8. What constitutes a “superior” race? 

9. What will happen if the races blessed with superior 
advantages do not share them with less fortunate races? 

10. Why are Chinese students in China reacting against 
Christianity as “the capitalists’ weapon”? Is Christian- 
ity the cause of this anti-Christian campaign? Do you 
think a country is obligated to protect investments with the 
life of her young men? For the control of what essential 
natural products can you conceive of nations going to war? 

11. What is the effect of American motion pictures upon 
non-Christian lands? 

12. Is there anything unneighborly about the relation 
between “classes” in America? 

13. What would happen in your Sunday discussion group 
if a young Jewess should come into your midst and say 
that she had made up her mind to study Christ’s way of 
life? Would she be welcomed in the social activities of 
the group? 

14. Do you believe in interracial marriages? What has 
been your observation of their result in happiness of the 
individuals and in quality of their children? 

15. What solutions of race prejudice can you think of 
besides intermarriage? Discuss and add to the following 
suggestions made by a great meeting of Student Volun- 
teers : 

Eliminate the white-superiority complex among children in 
primary grades of public schools. 

Have students of other races address students. 

Take advantage of every opportunity to understand people 


of other races with whom there are natural contacts. 
Develop more truthful journalism. 


146 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


Break down discriminations between races in dormitories, 
college fraternities, glee clubs, churches, etc. 

Correct definite wrongs against races when local situations 
arise in your community. 


16. Do you believe we can instill any ideal in a nation 
we may desire if we inculcate it in the young of two or 
three generations? Add to these methods by which mothers 
might instill the idea of world neighborliness in the minds 
of young children: stories of other lands’ boys and girls; 
missionary education; putting in their hands such maga- 
zines as World Neighbors, Everyland, National Geo- 
graphie. 

1%. Do you know of any better way to bring world 
neighborliness than to begin living as if all were brothers? 


CHAPTER XI 
WINGS—HAVE I ANY? 


“Lo! I am winged! Therefore must I quest! 
I must go on. Wings at my shoulder tug!” 


THEsE lines from Maude R. Warren’s festival pageant 
“The Winged Soul,” with which Wellesley College cele- 
brated its fiftieth anniversary, are an expression of the 
creative urge of faith which many young people are feel- 
ing to-day. ‘They were suggested by the old idea of the 
philosopher Plato in his Phedrus—that there are some 
souls who before birth push past their fellows and catch a 
glimpse of the splendor of the gods as they journey back 
and forth over the paths of heaven. These souls, when 
they find human birth, are forever restless until they work 
out for mankind some counterpart of the beauty they 
beheld; and in this flaming zeal that “frets them on” they 
attain their wings. 

The same thought is given modern phrasing in a recent 
letter from a college senior to a generous parent: 

The feeling I have is a desire to spread my wings—to clear 
out and lead a life of freedom—to do something different. But 
I don’t know where I’m at and I’ll admit it. Is there anything 
you can suggest? You’ve left the thing up to me so far, and 
I’m glad of it—I’ve had a chance to do some thinking on the 
subject—but it seems as if I’m approaching the end of the 
rope. Will you tell me what you’d like me to do?? 


It is with this creative urge, this surging up of the life 
of constructive faith, this onflowing of the developing 
powers of youth, that we are to deal in this chapter. How 
can one strengthen such wings as he has? How can he 
start to develop them if he has only shoulder blades to 
begin with? 

WincED WoMEN 


The Greek sculptor Praxiteles portrayed the Victory of 


1From the ‘‘Contributor’s Column,” Adlantic Monthly, July 1, 1925; used by 
permission. 
147 


148 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


Samothrace as a winged woman sweeping forward on the 
prow of a swiftly moving vessel with her garments flutter- 
ing in the breeze. This figure from a bygone civilization 
has many a prototype in the world to-day. But before 
we consider some of the world’s modern Winged Victories 
let us consider two women of creative faith who winged 
their way to Christ and immortality twenty centuries ago: 


A woman who interrupted Jesus.— 


Mark 5. 25-34. 

And a woman, who had an issue of blood twelve years, and 
had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent 
all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew 
worse, having heard the things concerning Jesus, came in the 
crowd behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I 
touch but his garments, I shall be made whole. And straight- 
way the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt 
in her body that she was healed of her.plague. And straight- 
way Jesus, perceiving in himself that the power proceeding 
from him had gone forth, turned him about in the crowd, and 
said, Who touched my garments? And his disciples said unto 
him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest 
thou, Who touched me? And he looked round about to see her 
that had done this thing. But the woman fearing and trem- 
bling, knowing what had been done to her, came and fell 
down. before him, and told him all the truth. And he said 
unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in 
peace, and be whole of thy plague. 


The Magdalene: Herald of Immortality.— 


John 20. 11-18. 

But Mary was standing without at the tomb weeping: so, 
as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb; and she 
beholdeth two angels in white sitting, one at the head, and 
one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they 
say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto 
them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know 
not where they have laid him. When she had thus said, she 
turned herself back, and beholdeth Jesus standing, and knew 
not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why 
weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be 
the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou hast borne him 
hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him 
away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turneth herself, and 
saith unto him in Hebrew, Rabboni; which is to say, Teacher. 
Jesus saith to her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended 
unto the Father: but go unto my brethren, and say to them, 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 149 


I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and 
your God. Mary Magdalene cometh and telleth the disciples, 
I have seen the Lord; and that he had said these things 
unto her. 


Tue WinGs oF NEED 


Notice the part played by will power in the invalid 
woman’s flight to Christ. It is hard for us to picture 
the reticence of this unnamed woman who “came in the 
crowd, behind,” pushing to the front of an Oriental throng 
unused to the presence of women in the streets. More- 
over, years of invalidism had increased the reserve natural 
to her sex and left her miserable and impoverished by fees 
and drugs. She was uncertain, too, as to how Christ would 
receive her. Only sheer will kept her wings from collaps- 
ing utterly. 

A firm framework.—Determination is the almost in- 
destructible duralumin framework of all wings. What else 
buoyed up the gallant young American flyers while drift- 
ing eight days with food and water supply exhausted and 
receiving from their radio such devastating messages as 
“All hope given up for flyers. Cease searching’? Deter- 
mination, too, gave lifting power to the wings of Miss 
Taisia Stadnichenko, a young woman who came to this 
country as a refugee from Russia. Three years later she 
achieved what scientists called “the impossible” by invent- 
ing a microthermal furnace tiny enough to be placed under 
a microscope for the observation of successive stages of 
petroleum refining—an invention that is destined to elimi- 
nate much waste. 

The woman’s winged desire seemed in a sense presump- 
tuous, for she actually interrupted Jesus when he was on 
so important an errand as the healing of the daughter of 
Jairus, the influential ruler of a synagogue. ‘To have 
interrupted Jesus at any time would have been bold; but 
at such a moment, when the delay she caused was punctu- 
ated by the message that the little girl had meanwhile 
died! Yet every act of creatwe faith has an element of 
boldness. Young Katharine of Siena dared attempt to 
get the Italian church and state together and complete her 
life task at the age of thirty-three. Catherine Booth, when 
her William was offered a charge she did not consider 


150 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


worthy of him, dared to rise in Wesley’s City Road Chapel, 
London, exclaiming, “William, don’t you go!” She there- 
by opened the way for his founding the Salvation Army. 

Practical results —The results of her flight to Christ 
were both immediate and far-reaching. She wrested from 
him whom she had previously known only by hearsay the 
most personal possible boon—her health; and in addition 
she gave painter-laureates from the first century on an 
inspiration for their portrait of the Great Physician. 

Many rash soarings have a practical aspect. Phoebe 
and John Brashear—those rare-spirited Pittsburgh 
astronomers and makers of lenses—gazed so long at the 
stars together through smoke of their industrial environ- 
ment that when the great separation came, “Uncle” John 
wrote over his beloved companion’s tomb, “We have gazed 
too long at the stars together to be afraid of the night.” 
Yet these watchers of the skies brought back to sordid 
earth from their star wanderings practical impulses to 
better the lives of the glass blowers and mill workers of 
the Smoky City’s South Side and elicited from them the 
uncommon love of common people. 

Touching heaven and earth.—lIs it not possible to com- 
bine the qualities of those two fascinating characters from 
Greek mythology—Icarus and Anteus? Icarus was the 
youth whose escape from prison was accomplished by wings 
his father ingeniously fastened to his shoulders with wax; 
but his soaring ambition took him so near the sun that the 
wax melted, his wings fell off, and he dropped into the sea 
afterward named for him. Anteus was the giant whose 
strength came, not from wings, but from actual contact 
with Mother Earth. Each time Hercules threw him to the 
ground, he grew stronger. With our feet upon the earth, 
and our wings among the clouds, what wonders may be 
accomplished! It was a similarly happy combination of 
qualities that the prophet Ezekiel ascribed to the four re- 
markable creatures mentioned in the first chapter of his 
book: each one had four wings, but “they had the hands 
of a man under their wings.” What a combination of 
heavenly motive power and earthly practicality! Living 
cherubim, with faces as of man and movement as of flashes 
of lightning! 


a 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 151 


Clipped wings.—Sometimes an Icaruslike soul is held 
down to earth by physical weakness. Soaring spirits are 
thwarted by inability of the body to sustain them. 
Josephine Preston Peabody often wondered why she was 
born with a thousand wings of the spirit and hampered 
with a ball and chain about both her feet and hands. Her 
frail body was almost consumed by her passionate urge 
to capture the world’s beauty in poetic form. She has 
been likened to a Vesuvius imprisoned in a delicate por- 
celain vase. But how much nobler it is to be consumed by 
creative fires than never to mount at all! A young flier 
whose plane burned over a Pennsylvania forest was heard 
to remark shortly before his death: “People who get their 
thrills from Broadway wonder why I risk my life flying. 
The mere feeling that I am, by faithfully carrying the 
mails more speedily than formerly, doing my bit for the 
progress of humanity makes me feel that I could fly. even 
without a plane.” 

Those who themselves have no wings often try to inter- 
fere with others’ flying. The complaining disciples were 
embarrassed by the importunate action of a woman. They 
were thinking, perhaps, of the spectacular healing Jesus 
might accomplish at the home of courteous Jairus. Robert 
Browning, in his poem “Andrea Del Sarto,” gives a match- 
less picture of the disastrous effect of a wingless wife— 
Lucrezia—upon the art of her husband, the “faultless 
painter.” So visionless was this unappreciative beauty 
that with the careless passing of her robes she smeared 
paintings that other artists vainly tried to equal. 


WIinas oF BLESSING 


Some hidden power seems to have kept Mary Magdalene 
flying when her wings were broken and dragging in the 
mire of defeated hopes. Human feet alone could not have 
borne her to the shadowy garden with her last fine offer- 
ing of precious tribute. Her sorrow must have been shod, 
Mercurylike, with wings—such wings as Isaiah pictured: 
“Hven the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young 
men shall utterly fall: but they that wait for Jehovah shall 
renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as 
eagles.” Had Mary’s creative faith not found wings that 


152 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


Easter morning, womanhood would probably not have had 
the honor of heralding to the world the message of im- 
mortality—His immortality and ours. 

The exercise of faith—Overmuch ease and happiness 
tend to make vague our sense of dependence on God. Our 
wings become stunted and finally disappear like unused 
vestigeal organs. Dr. S. Parkes Cadman said to a group 
of church women: 

It is not easy to keep close to the cross in an age when 
luxuries are every woman’s right, and when she may have, 
by pressing an electric button, comforts and conveniences 
not known in the age of Queen Victoria. The tremendous 
increase in scientific invention has given women opportunities 
to see and do more in a day than their grandmothers did in 
ten years, but there has not been a corresponding spiritual 
growth. We need to-day a better and deeper religious 
life. We need to get young people to love Christ. The great- 
est peril of the present generation is the tendency to give 
the center of the stage to things which do not matter. 


Singleness of purpose.—See what Mary accomplished by 
bending her efforts to one purpose. There were many 
very laudable causes to which she might have directed her- 
self that morning. The poor of Jerusalem were ever in 
need of raiment and food, children were crying for love, 
the parched lips of many a leper would have blessed her 
for a cup of cold water. But the Master was dead! Spices 
and oil for anointing his body were the paramount call of 
the hour, and to their preparation she devoted herself. And 
from that concentration behold what riches flowed: the 
joyfulest news her own ears could possibly have craved: 
“He is risen!” the privilege of being the bearer of good 
tidings to her friends; the sound of his own voice address- 
ing her by name: “Mary”; the promise of meeting him 
again in the place of her usual daily activities, where she 
had been accustomed to see him. 

Young Mary Lyon, campaigning for funds with which 
to establish a seminary at Mount Holyoke for “young 
women in the common walks of life” because she felt that 
“women must be educated,” gave herself so persistently to 
the cause that at times she was obliged to sleep for two or 
three days just to “come back” from the fatigue. When 
Louisa May Alcott desired to accomplish a certain amount 


“AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 153 


of writing she would go from little quiet Concord, where 
everyone knew her, to Boston, shut herself up in a room, 
concentrate on her task, and emerge in a month or two 
“tired, hungry, and cross” but with her goal attained. 

It is by bending toward the one goal of uplifting Tur- 
key that Halida Hanoum Edib in our generation has 
wrought such wonders for her own sex. However we may 
view her politics we cannot but admire her creative courage. 
The first of the Turkish women to lay aside her veil, so 
symbolic of Oriental seclusion through the ages, she gave 
herself whole-heartedly to the education of her sisters 
through clubs, the press, and such organizations as the 
Red Crescent nursing order. Recognized by Mustapha 
Kemal as the embodiment of the new Turkey, she was 
made minister of education and sent her sons to the Uni- 
versity of Illinois so that she might devote her whole 
energy to her country. Once in a certain battle she used 
her discarded veil as a bandage to symbolize the freedom 
she aspired to bring her country’s women. After her mar- 
riage with the Anatolian minister of health she devoted 
her creative urge to crusading for health and education. 
In patient seclusion she has written her memoirs of 
the soarings of the winged women of the new Orient. 

Lifting self and others too—The message Mary 
heralded changed the whole atmosphere of the world’s 
future from dawn-grayness to the warm rosiness of the 
risen sun. So may we bring about new atmosphere and 
new social orders if we have a mind to do so. Dr. George 
A. Coe, of Columbia University, has voiced a gripping 
protest against a “static world,” in which persons of cul- 
ture and potential influence are content to see the world 
go around just as it is without raising one whit the level 
of conditions in which people live or making it more fit 
for them. 


How WIncs ARE TESTED 


The same situation that utterly wrecks the wings of one 
person may demonstrate the lifting power of another’s. 
The circumstances of Christ’s last days veered the course 
of Peter, showed Thomas that he had too much ballast of 
doubt aboard, and sent Judas crashing to the earth. Yet 


154 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


this same sequence of events was the final step in the mak- 
ing of Mary Magdalene. 

Testing by tempests.—A certain pastor’s mail budget 
recently contained striking evidence of how a hospital 
may mean a glorious triumph of faith in one person at 
the same moment that it is witnessing another’s agony be- 
cause scientific studies seem to conflict with the faith of 
childhood—a faith that has not been allowed to develop 
along with other faculties. The young woman studying 
mediciné writes, in part: 


I decided to ask you because you were so far away that no 
one would be any the wiser if what is asked cannot be done; 
and because I don’t know any other person of your profession. 
... Since I was a junior in high school, about five or six 
years ago, I have known positively that there is no such thing 
as future life and no such thing as a personal God, which of 
course excludes Christ and prayer. Therefore, I should not be 
affiliated with any church. . .. How can one slip quietly out 
of affiliation with the church? Quietly, so that no one— 
mother, for instance—will be unhappy? It must be done 
quietly or not at all. 


The young wife battling for health after long delaying 
treatment in the hope that God would heal her by prayer 
alone, to demonstrate his power to her materialistic friends, 
is finding larger faith: 


God has been so very helpful to me in these past weeks, and 
I am very happy that I am at last doing everything in accord- 
ance with his will, so that there is a very marked physical 
improvement. Having been through all sorts of investigations 
by X rays, electro cardiograph, hectographs, shots of vaccines, 
and a complete rest (I have not been off this bed since I 
arrived here and have been on full diet), all these, with God’s 
hand blessing them, have been helpful to me. So you see I 
ought surely to improve—now; but all this had to come as 
a direct message from our heavenly Father above to me, 
though it took longer than usual for me to accept it. But God 
will bless me, I know; and if it had not been for his wonder- 
ful love, I’d surely be very disheartened by now. I know he 
will take care of me—that is all—and even down here he has 
made my days brighter by putting it in to the hearts of many 
of his children to send me messages. 


If the medical student’s egotism could have been tem- 
pered by the invalid’s spiritual appreciation of the benef- 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 155 


icent ministry of science, her attitude toward the church 
might have changed. Her narrow little mind had evi- 
dently not discovered the faith of such men as Louis 
Pasteur, who found in the revelations of science a “third 
testament.” 

Testing by weights——Anizia Yzierska, the immigrant 
girl who was “a nobody from nowhere,” with no knowledge 
of English, living in a New York cellar, by sheer determi- 
nation made herself wings by which she mounted to a 
lofty prominence in the literary world through her stories 
of life as she saw it in the Hast Side Ghetto. In Hunger- 
ing Hearts, Salome of the Tenements, and The Bread 
Givers she has given the best presentation yet written of 
the real problems and tragic conflicts in the lives of for- 
eign-born parents and first-generation Americans. 


Not oF Mary ALONE 


Not of Mary alone 
Asked Christ on the Easter morn, 
When death’s cold sealing stone 
He burst with life newborn: 
“Woman, why weepest thou? 
Know ye not, I am risen now?” 


But of every woman in Galilee 

From Jordan’s stream to the jeweled sea; 

Of every woman by old laws bound 

In temple and street where fetters ground, 

In homes bereaved and courts oppressed, 
He asked with voice which brought sweet rest: 
“Woman, O woman, whom seekest thou? 
Know ye not, I am risen now?” 


To-day he asks in the self-same way 
Of lives whom toil is wasting away 
In towns whose tasks no joys allow 
For young hearts slain with hungering pain; 
“Woman, O woman, why weepest thou? 
Can it be that I rose in vain?” 
—M. S. M. 


QUESTIONS FoR Group Discussion 


1. Of all the women you have ever known personally, 
whose work has been the most truly creative, judged by its 
helpfulness to the largest number of people over the long- 
est period of time? 


156 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


2. This is the New York Times list of twelve living 
American women who have achieved “greatness as great- 
ness goes in modern American life”: 


Geraldine Farrar Edith Wharton 

Carrie Chapman Catt Amy Lowell (since deceased) 
Molla Mallory Minnie Maddern Fiske 

Alice Paul M. Carey Thomas 

Ida Tarbell Mary Pickford 

Jane Addams Agnes Repplier 


What names would you eliminate from this list, and what 
add? 

3. What reason can you assign for the fact that the list 
did not contain the name of one mother? Does mother- 
hood prevent or encourage intellectual and artistic crea- 
tive effort? Doctor Halliday, the great Christian psycho- 
analyst, has observed that those who do not bear children 
often turn to creative writing. Maude Royden believes 
that the sacred function of motherhood so enriches the 
soul that married women ought to be encouraged to enter 
the Christian ministry for the enlargement of human 
sympathies which they could contribute. 

4. As you look back at the teachers of your youth do 
you feel that they encouraged the development of your 
individuality and urged you to help mold the world’s 
future? or did they simply require you to assimilate the 
knowledge they parceled out ? 

5. Does society as now organized tend to stifle or to 
encourage creativeness? What is meant by “the American 
fad for standardization”? Mention several concrete in- 
stances of standardized tastes and habits. 

6. What do you understand by Vida Scudder’s state- 
ment: “Life’s drama is smothered in details; ’tis largely 
composed of irrelevances. Our selective instinct should 
supply emphases and suppress the irrelevant’? 

%. What is meant by “the tragedy of trifles’? How 
would you set about rescuing someone who has succumbed 
to it? 

8. If an educated woman is one who helps bring about 
the social changes needed by her community, can you be 
classed as such? 

9. When in your life have you experienced the joy of 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 157 


finding your creative energy attaining its goal: as a 
teacher, creating hunger for education; as a physician, 
bringing about physical well-being in critical cases; as a 
social servant, helping create a health zone in a squalid 
community; as a business woman, bringing smooth-run- 
ning order into the tangled complexities of office work or 
personnel ? 

10. Do you find yourself living only for to-day, chasing 
such “goat feathers” as blow across your path? or have you 
determined upon one unifying motive, underlying all your 
business hours, play time and periods of worship? What 
is that motive? 

11. Have you ever made an inventory of yourself, such 
as is conducted by personal-research bureaus, which ask 
their clients frankly to state whether they are able to pur- 
sue a task steadily; to indicate the effect of interruptions, 
of adverse criticisms, etc. ? 

12. What is your definition of a “dawdler”; of a “doer”? 
To which class, frankly, do you belong? Are women less 
influential to-day than formerly because they are not 
focusing their effort on one definite goal? Can you match 
Queen Elizabeth, Katharine of Russia, Queen Victoria, 
with women who are molding your age? 


CHAPTER XIT 
SILENCE IN THE CHURCHES—OR SERVICE? 


To a head nurse in Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, 
Dr. Wilfred T. Grenfell, of the Labrador Mission, came 
one day with this challenge, born of his supreme faith in 
human nature: 

If you really want to have the time of your life, come with 
me and run a hospital next summer for the orphans of the 
northland. There will not be a cent of money in it for you, 
and you will have to pay your own expenses, like all my vVol- 
unteers who come up from the colleges of America. But Ill 
guarantee that you will feel a love of life you have never 
before experienced. It’s having the time of anyone’s life to be 
in the service of Christ. 


Lire THROUGH SERVICE 


And when the capable young nurse returned from help- 
ing Doctor Grenfell make the lame to walk, the blind to 
see, the orphans to be mothered, the lonely to be comforted, 
her whole reaction to the experience was: “I never knew 
before that life was good for anything but what one could 
get out of it. Now I know that the real fun lies in seeing 
how much one can put into life for others.” 

Adventure and education.—Thus have modern mission- 
aries approached hundreds of the finest women and men of 
young America, showing them that service for Christ is 
life’s supreme adventure; summoning them to do the im- 
possible, just as Jesus was always doing; and making 
Christ more real in their lives than he had ever been in 
their imaginations. Doctor Grenfell’s emphasis upon gww- 
ing young people something to do for Christ is in line 
with the newest emphasis of educators, who predict that 
within twenty-five years the test of admission to our highly 
endowed institutions will not be athletic prowess, intellec- 
tual pedigree, or mental ability, but willingness to serve. 
While rejoicing that America’s philanthropy for one year 
totals $2,500,000,000 (exclusive of appropriations by States 
and cities and of gifts to churches), these educational 


158 


NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 159 


pioneers feel that money is not sufficient benevolence. 
Service is more fundamental. 

In this tremendous projection of the service idea woman 
is to play a significant role. The popularity of “the cling- 
ing vine” and the “doll’s house” type has already passed. 
As someone has graphically put it, women are using their 
heads for something more than a “parking place for hats 
or a foundation for a permanent wave.” They are engaged 
in occupations undreamed by their grandmothers: sea cap- 
tains, bankers, leaders of orchestras, managers of fox farms, 
lighthouse keepers—busy in all but thirty-five occupations 
open to men. 

We gladly venerate the fearless women who were among 
the earliest Christian martyrs, and the Scottish Cove- 
nanters, who died of exposure in roofless cells on the out- 
skirts of Edinburgh; and the Pilgrim mothers, whose 
_ hearts were full of dark forebodings, in spite of which they 
came. As we think of them we sigh: 


“Oh God, to us may grace be given 
To follow in their train”; 


yet some of our contemporary women are engaged in Chris- 
tian service involving quite as great sacrifice as theirs. And 
for all of us there are alluring gateways to service if we 
will only open them and patiently prepare ourselves for 
the way that spreads before us in pleasant perspective. 


WomMEN IN THE Harty CHRISTIAN CHURCH 


By way of determining woman’s place in Christianity’s 
program of service to-day let us consider in our conclud- 
ing study what Paul, as a father of the infant church, had 
to say about woman in the work of the Kingdom. What 
Jesus did for women was emphasized in our first chapter; 
in our last let us consider what woman has done for 
Jesus as a demonstration of her gratitude. For if she owes 
everything to Christianity, Christianity owes also much to 
her. 


Paul’s early attitude toward woman.— 


1 Corinthians 14. 33-35. 
For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace. 


160 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


As in all the churches of the saints, let the woman keep 
silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them 
to speak; but let them be in subjection, as also said the law. 
And if they would learn anything, let them ask their own 
husbands at home: for it is shameful for a woman to speak 
in the church. 


His later appreciation of her service.— 


Acts 17..12, 33, 34: 


Many of them therefore believed; also of the Greek women 
of honorable estate, and of men, not a few. ... Thus Paul 
went out from among them. But certain men clave unto him, 
and believed: among whom also was Dionysius the Areopagite, 
and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. 


Romans 16. 1, 2, 6, 12, 13, 15, 16. 


I commend unto you Phoebe our sister, who is a servant 
of the church that is at Cenchree: that ye receive her in the 
Lord, worthily of the saints, and that ye assist her in what- 
soever matter she may have need of you: for she herself also 
hath been a helper of many, and of mine own self. ... 

Salute Mary, who bestowed much labor on you.... 

Salute Tryphaena and Tryphosa, who labor in the Lord. 
Salute Persis the beloved, who labored much in the Lord. 
Salute Rufus the chosen in the Lord, and his mother and 
mine. ... Salute Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, 
and Olympas, and all the saints that are with them. Salute 
one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ 
salute you. 


Philemon 1, 2. 

Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, 
to Philemon our beloved and fellow-worker, and to Apphia our 
sister, and to Archippus our fellow-soldier, and to the church 
in thy house. 


Philippians 4. 1-3. 

Wherefore, my brethren beloved and longed for, my joy and 
crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my beloved. I exhort 
Euodia, and I exhort Syntyche, to be of the same mind in 
the Lord. Yea, I beseech thee also, true yokefellow, help these 
women, for they labored with me in the gospel, with Clement 
also, and the rest of my fellow-workers, whose names are in 
the book of life. 


1 Timothy 5. 9-11. 

Let none be enrolled as a widow under threescore years old, 
having been the wife of one man, well reported of for good 
works; if she hath brought up children, if she hath used hos- 
pitality to strangers, if she hath washed the saints’ feet, if 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 161 


she hath relieved the afflicted, if she hath diligently followed 
every good work. But younger widows refuse: for when they 
have waxed wanton, against Christ, they desire to marry. 

1 Corinthians 7. 34. 


The woman that is unmarried and the virgin is careful for 
the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and 
in spirit: but she that is married is careful for the things 
of the world, how she may please her husband. 


Other women church workers.— 
Acts 9. 36, 39. 


Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, 
which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was 
full of good works and almsdeeds which she did.... And 
Peter arose and went with them. And when he was come, 
they brought him into the upper chamber: and all the widows 
stood by him weeping, and showing the coats and garments 
which Dorcas made, while she was with them. 


CHRISTIAN WoMEN A NEw TYPE 


Paul’s early attitude toward the activity of women in 
the church, as indicated by his advice in 1 Corinthians 14. 
33-35, strikes every thinking woman as ultraconservative. 
We must remember that these words were addressed 
to the women of dissolute Corinth. In this busy com- 
mercial city on the Isthmus was a shrine of Aphrodite, 
where no less than a thousand women were employed in 
sensuous rites of worship. Wishing to shield the women 
disciples of Jesus even from suspicion, Paul went to 
extremes. First he warned them to be veiled when en- 
gaged in prophecy, then he decided that it would be better 
for them not to prophesy at all but to “keep silence in the 
churches.” 

Unjustifiable deductions.—Do you know any women who 
are making Paul’s statement, which he himself modified 
by a later appreciation of their service, an excuse for re- 
maining silent in churches to-day when opportunity is 
given for testimony and public prayer? Do you consider 
their excuse valid? 

How do you react to the following open letter written 
by a clergyman to a prominent editor ?— 


DEAR EDITOR: 
Saint Paul advises that women should keep silent in the 


162 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


churches. ‘To-day in some of our churches it has become so 
bad that the men are ordered to keep silent by the women. 
It seems to be a matter of conscience with the women. 

Any religious progress for the future must be engineered 
by the men. Just as little as armies can be run by women, 
or States, or big business, so little can churches. The twen- 
tieth century must see a return of the command of the 
churches to the men, a return to the Pauline spirit, a return 
to government by men in the church. It is high time. Let 
it be a matter of conscience with the men. 

Rev. H. C. BLANK. 


Paul’s enlarging concept.—There is such a sharp con- 
trast between Paul’s attitude in the first passage quoted 
and his elsewhere outspoken appreciation of the good works 
of women that we wonder how to account for the reversal 
of opinion. What led him to change his mind? It was 
accomplished by just one thing: the compelling quality of 
her service. This made him glad to acknowledge her as 
a fellow worker, a sister, and even as a mother (Romans 
16. 13). Three interesting phases of Paul’s attitude to- 
ward women are apparent: After persecuting them co- 
equally with men before his conversion he regulated their 
conduct in public for the sake of decorum, and in the 
maturity of his ministry, by many open statements of ap- 
preciation, he gave woman due credit for her good works 
in the fellowship of faith, Many women were converted 
through Paul’s preaching, including “Greek women of 
honorable estate,’ and Damaris, who was one of the few 
rewards of his preaching in Athens. But many, also, 
“labored much in the Lord.” Paul gives unstinted praise 
to their efforts in such statements as Philippians 4. 3. 
After exhorting the querulous women Euodia and Syn- 
tyche to try to work more congenially and “be of the same 
mind in the Lord,” he urges his Philippian friends to “help 
these women, for they labored with me in the gospel, with 
Clement also, and the rest of my fellow workers, whose 
names are in the book of life.” 


OFFICIAL RECOGNITION IN THE CHURCH 


One of his most detailed eulogies concerns’ Phebe 
(Romans 16. 1, 2). This Christian matron, living in the 
Kastern port of Corinth, is believed to have been a widow; 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 163 


for she was able to go alone to Rome, as she could not 
have done with propriety had she been unmarried. That 
she was wealthy is guessed from the fact that she was able 
to finance the long journey from Corinth to Rome and 
from Paul’s allusion to her having been “a helper of many, 
and of mine own self.” She may have been going on a 
legal errand pertaining to her personal business—perhaps 
a lawsuit. In this case Paul’s commission—to deliver a 
message to the friends whom he was so eager to see in 
Rome—would have been incidental. Others believe that 
the phrase “servant of the church” points to her mission 
in Rome as an official errand for the believers, since Phaebe 
was a “deaconess,” the only one of the women workers who 
is so called in the New Testament, though the other 
women mentioned in Romans 16. 12 were also of that call- 
ing. 

Deaconesses.— There were three distinct religious offices 
held by women in the Pauline age of the church: dea- 
coness, widow, and virgin. Of the three the deaconess seems 
most important. Her duties were not fundamentally dif- 
ferent from the tasks of deaconesses to-day, although it 
is probable that she was not officially ordained but simply 
“set aside.” Her work was to instruct women converts, 
prepare them for baptism, assist at baptisms and anoint- 
ings for the sake of propriety, visit the portions of the 
homes given over to women, care for the poor, and possibly 
serve at tables, like the seven men appointed to free the 
Twelve for the more important ministry of preaching. 
Later, in the patristic age of the church, the deaconesses 
stood at the women’s entrances to the churches, greeted the 
worshipers, and helped them to find seats in an orderly 
manner. 

Are you familiar with the qualifications for deaconess 
work to-day? A deaconess is defined by the Discipline of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church as “a woman who has 
been led by the Holy Spirit to devote herself to Christlike 
service under the direction of the church; and who, after 
proper training and probation, has been duly licensed and 
consecrated.” She must be at least twenty-one years old. 
No vow of perpetual service is required, although deaconess 
work should be considered a life service, not to be discon- 


164 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


tinued except for good and sufficient reasons. The form 
of her work and the wearing of distinctive garb are de- 
termined by the organization with which the deaconess 
serves. The 804 deaconesses and probationers of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church in active service in 1925 
were thus distributed : 


Teaching MINIsStry (ee eae t owen 4 ome or ble a & aeenateatee 80 
Healing; Ministery ee ee SG ewe ehavels so eve toe Pe Be Be 87 
Welfare ministry. ei TR oi iigce te taal ote 139 
Cyeneral  MINIskiy es ai Sieh Cae Redes ae ln 183 
Pastoral Ministry ee ee a tee ee 315 


Widows.—These formed another group of Christian 
workers in the early church. The qualifications for be- 
coming a member of this class in good standing were very 
strict, as stated by Paul in his first letter to Timothy (1 
Timothy 5. 9,10). Surely any who met all these require- 
ments merited the “relief” accorded to widows so scru- 
pulously by the early church; but they were in no sense 
objects of charity because of their old age and their past 
virtue. They earned their “pension” through their con- 
tinuous service in the way of instructing the younger 
women and possibly caring for orphans and nursing the 
sick. It can be easily seen that strict supervision was 
necessary to prevent members from creeping in who had 
other means of support or who were inclined to be indolent. 
The deaconesses, as a superior order, may have been selected 
from the widows, who continued as a class until the 
Middle Ages. ‘Their duties, as suggested by Paul in 1 
Timothy 5, are only what might be expected of every 
Christian: “She hath her hope set on God, and con- 
tinueth in supplications and prayers night and day.” Paul 
made no provision for young widows who did not wish to 
marry again but said, “I desire . . . that the young 
widows marry, bear children, rule the household, give no 
occasion to the adversary for reviling.” Here again he 
was fitting his advice to the social organization of his 
times. 

Does the concern of the early church for the poor of its 
own parish persist to-day? Is the communion-Sunday poor 
fund emphasized in your church and used for such pur- 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 165 


poses as the early collections? There is an “apostolic suc- 
cession” about such customs as this, which should make us 
all honor them with our gifts. 

Virgins—The duties of virgins in the work of the 
church virgins are not so clear as those of widows. The 
four virgin daughters of Philip the Evangelist are recorded 
as “prophesying” at the time when Paul was guest of their 
father at Caesarea on his way from Tyre to Jerusalem. 
The importance of the widows decreased as the church 
later laid emphasis upon chastity, and the ideal of ascetic 
expressed itself in monastic life. 

Women of exceptional ability—A higher order of serv- 
ice than that of deaconesses, widows, or virgins was carried 
on by a few women like Prisca (see chapter 2), who, by 
her instruction of such young men as Apollos, would 
qualify to-day as a director of religious education or a | 
woman preacher. In fact, one worthy commentator has 
paid her the compliment of attributing the authorship of 
the book of Hebrews to her inspired genius. 


Moprern CHurcH Work FoR WoMEN 


Full-time service.—How active do you think women 
should be in the official work of the church to-day? Do 
you believe that women should be preachers of the gospel ? 
According to the Methodist Discipline they may be or- 
dained deacons and elders and assigned to “supply” ap- 
pointments but may not be members of the Annual 
Conferences or be included im the “traveling ministry.” A 
flourishing organization of women preachers exists. 

It was only because the doors of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church were closed to her that Frances Willard 
abandoned the dream of her girlhood to preach the gospel 
and devoted her life to temperance reform. For the same 
reason Dr. Anna Howard Shaw finally applied to the 
Methodist Protestants for her ordination. As early as 
1852 Dr. Antoinette Blackwell occupied an American 
Congregationalist pulpit. At the age of ninety-three she 
wrote her last theological book. Mrs. Mary A. Livermore 
also distinguished the calling of ordained women preachers 
in America. Both Congregationalists and Unitarians in 
the United States to-day admit women to the full ministry. 


166 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


The world’s most noted woman preacher to-day—Agnes 
Maude Royden—is an Anglican. Her genius is doing 
ac to bring the ministry of women into repute in every 
land. 

The English Wesleyan Church has long deferred the ad- 
mission of women to the ministry, although it had promi- 
nent women preachers in Wesley’s day, such as Mary 
Bosanquet. She led a distinguished group of women 
preachers, devoted her fortune to the maintenance of an 
orphanage and charity center at Leeds, and was married 
to John Fletcher, who Wesley had hoped would be his suc- 
cessor. Such a one, too, was Sarah Crosby, who itinerated 
through central England and is believed by many to have 
inspired George Eliot’s “blessed woman” in Adam Bede. 

The director of religious education has a professional 
standing equal to that of the ministry of pulpit and pas- 
torate. Have you ever considered for yourself this pro- 
fession? Write to the Board: of Education! for informa- 
tion regarding its opportunities, the training involved, and 
where that training may best be obtained. 

What other lines of distinctly Christian service are 
open to young women to-day besides religious education, 
deaconess work, and the ordained ministry? Make a re- 
port on opportunities in hospital and other health service, 
dietetics, institutional management, pastors’ secretaries, 
Sunday-school visitors, girls’ workers, directors of parish- 
house activities, and the specialized demands of home and 
foreign mission fields. 

Volunteer service.—Dorcas, whom Paul probably never 
knew, inspires us because she is the forerunner of all those 
unofficial, volunteer “church mothers’ without whose 
assistance the great work of Christianity could not be effec- 
tively carried on to-day. We are not so much concerned, 
for our present purpose, about the miracle of her resurrec- 
tion as the fact that Peter considered her life so fruitful 
that it was worth his while to restore it for prolonged serv- 
ice. Nota selfish life or a sinful one did he single out, but 
one that seemed too noble to be snuffed out untimely. 

Dorcas finds successors to-day in many a Ladies’ Aid 
society, service guild, hospital auxiliary, church-unit group 

1 Address, 740 Rush St., Chicago. 





AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 167 


leader, or volunteer administrator of the local poor fund. 
No remuneration is involved in her service; indeed, the 
leisure of affluence and financial independence are both in- 
volved in her supplying of garments for the poor and other 
“alms that she did.” She was the old-fashioned sort of 
social-service worker who maintained personal contact with 
the needy of her community. Dorcas was not “ordained,” 
there was no official ecclesiastical stamp upon her service, 
but her life entitled her to be heir of Christ’s bequest 
(Matthew 25. 34-46). 

The service motive—Notice that she is termed 
“disciple.” In all the New Testament this is the only 
instance where the feminine form of the Greek word trans- 
lated “disciple” is used. In this single word the whole 
motive of her service is revealed. It is Christian. Is it 
possible for women to perform Christly service without 
themselves believing in him? What is the distinction be- 
tween “social service” and “Christian service”? 

Look up and report some of the noblest service tasks 
being carried on by women—tasks that do not bear the 
official label of the church but are helping to bring His will 
to pass in the world. You will be inspired by the work of 
the American Women’s Hospital clinics, motor dispen- 
saries, etc., in Macedonia and Greece. Then, there is the 
work of Mrs. Mabel Willebrandt, assistant attorney-general 
of the United States. From her office in the Depart- 
ment of Justice in Washington this young woman lawyer 
has aided in the struggle to enforce the eighteenth amend- 
ment. Her work also has to do with game protection, 
pure food, prison supervision, taxes, etc. She believes 
that there are great opportunities for women in the 
practice of law; for it is not sex, but temperament, 
which is a barrier to success. This young former school- 
teacher looks to women to play a large part in helping 
to keep the country dry. Other thrilling pieces of Chris- 
tian patriotic service are those of Jane Addams, of Hull 
House, Chicago; Julia Lathrop and Grace Abbott, pio- 
neers in the federal Children’s Bureau; Mary Anderson, 
the Swedish woman who came to the directorship of the 
Woman’s Bureau of the Department of Labor after play- 
ing successive roles as housemaid, garment maker, spool- 


168 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


factory worker, organizer in the National Boot and Shoe 
Workers’ Union and war worker in the Women in Indus- 
try Division of the National Defense Advisory Committee ; 
and Mrs. Florence Knapp, called from the dean’s chair 
of the Home Economics College of Syracuse University to 
be New York State’s first woman secretary of state. 
What possibilities for service and what responsibilities 
do you see in the positions of women as State governor, 
judge, members of the government foreign service, repre- 
sentatives and senators in Congress? | 


QUESTIONS FoR Group Discussion 


1. Why has Dorcas been called “a woman who is always 
wanted”? What characteristics make people “wanted,” 
ordinarily and in emergencies? 

2. Does the removal of prejudice against women in 
public service involve a greater responsibility for us as 
Christians to engage in such service, or does it make it pos- 
sible for the work to be done effectively by any woman? 

3. Should women who are members of Christian 
churches give themselves to charity organizations main- 
tained by the public at large or leave these to women who 
are deaf to the appeals of organized Christianity ? 

4, How far do the walls of “home” extend? Define 
“home,” 

5. Must one go outside his own home to carry on a wide 
service? Could you duplicate, if invalidized, the vision of 
Mrs. Dora Vannix? Bishop Burleson of South Dakota 
has appointed her to a “wheel-chair ministry.” As secre- 
tary of the Church League of the isolated in her State she 
keeps in touch with 460 families, sending them letters, con- 
ducting a church correspondence school, and bringing the 
church into homes that would otherwise certainly be with- 
out it in that sparsely settled section of our country. 

6. Is our excuse of being “too busy” to help really sin- 
cere? Are we too busy or too indifferent? Do you know 
of any women of your generation who are doing work 
like Elizabeth Fry’s and at the same time rearing ten chil- 
dren; keeping a beautiful home for them and husband; 
preaching and traveling widely in the interest of reform? 

%. Have you ever realized how much of the world’s 


AND PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 169 


benevolence is carried on by unmarried women? What 
do people mean when they speak of a “State going mother- 
ing’? Do the duties here involved give adequate outlet 
for “bachelor maids” and childless mothers to enjoy 
“other motherhood” for the sake of society? 

8. How much is “service” recognized as a basis of fame 
to-day? Of a total of sixty-four statues in the Hall of 
Fame in New York University seven represent women: 
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Lyon, Charlotte Cushman, 
Maria Mitchell, Emma Willard, Frances E. Willard, and 
Alice Freeman Palmer. Of the twenty-seven nominated 
for election in 1925 only one was a woman—Dorothea 
Lynde Dix. On what achievement does the claim of each 
of these rest? Can you find satisfactory explanation for 
this ratio in the fact that no person is eligible until twenty- 
five years after death, and the activity of women in serv- 
ice is of comparatively recent date? Or are women living 
too comfortably and losing the “wings” of creative effort 
referred to in Chapter XI? 

9. Would you say that young people of to-day are 
inclined to be altruistic or self-centered? The following 
statistics are quoted from Women and Leisure, by Lorine 
Pruette: 

(a) Three hundred and forty-seven girls were asked, and 
334 replied, whether they would rather be famous, brilliant, 
beautiful, or valuable. Seventy-one replied “famous,” 31, 
“beautiful,’ 159, “brilliant,” only 61, “valuable.” Twelve 
combined their answers. 

(bo) Two hundred and ninety-four girls were asked whether 
they would rather succeed themselves, or help the man they 
loved to succeed, or help their children to succeed. They re- 
plied as follows: Help children, 33; help husband, 155; suc- 
ceed in own line of work, 106. 

(c) When asked whether they would rather be wealthy, 


famous, of service, or happy regardless, the replies ran: 
wealthy, 16; famous, 44; happy regardless, 134; of service, 145. 


10. Miss Ting Chu Ching, after studying in the United 
States, England, and India, has succeeded an American 
woman as national General Secretary of the Young 
Women’s Christian Association for China, with a secre- 
tarial staff of fifty-four Americans, sixty Chinese, and 
others. A Chinese woman edits the Burma News in Ran- 


170 NEW TESTAMENT WOMEN 


goon. Denmark has appointed the world’s first woman 
Cabinet member—Fru Nina Bang—as minister of educa- 
tion. What would be the effect of spreading the career of 
such a girl before a woman who says habitually, “I don’t 
believe in foreign missions” ? 

11. Do you see any hope for purification of American 
politics in the fact that Barnard College reports the en- 
rollment of women in its new department of government 
to be doubling each year? 

12. Name in the order of their importance several great 
tasks in which all the women of the world may well unite. 
How about a women’s world federation for peace? for 
prohibition of intoxicants and legalized vice? 

13. What are some of the obstacles which you, per- 
sonally, would have to overcome if you were to engage suc- 
cessfully in a life of service? Prejudice of your family? 
Defects in your own disposition? Deficient education? 
Natural reticence about activity in public? Laziness? 
Tendency to become easily discouraged? Reluctance to 
surrender personal comforts? 

14. Would you accept a call of life service if it should 
come to you? Does prayer play any vital part in deter- 
mining your attitude toward your service plans? 


APPENDIX 


SUGGESTIONS FOR BOOKSHELF 


INSPIRATIONAL 


The New Testament (American Standard Version and 
An American Translation, by Edgar J. Goodspeed). 

Infe’s Inttle Pitfalls, by A. Maude Royden; G. P. Put- 
nam’s Sons. 

Moral Standards of the Rising Generation, by A. Maude 
Royden; Womans Press. 

Christian Fundamentals (in question-study form), by 
Oolooah Burner; Womans Press. 

Doing the Impossible (chapel talks to young women 
and men), by John E. Calfee; Fleming H. Revell Com- 


pany. 
The Girls Year Book; Womans Press. 
The Womans Press (magazine) ; 600 Lexington Avenue, 
New York City. 


BIBLICAL 


Bible Types of Modern Women, by W. Mackintosh 
Mackay; George H. Doran Company. 

Women of the Bible, by Annie Russell Marble; The 
Century Company. 

Who’s Who in the Bible (a directory of Scripture char- 
acters), by E. Fletcher Allen; G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 

The Mother of Jesus: Her Problems and Her Glory, by 
A. T. Robertson; George H. Doran Company. 


HISTORICAL 


The Church and Woman, by A. Maude Royden; George 
H. Doran Company. (See also the sketch of Miss Roy- 
den’s life in Painted Windows.) 

Saints and Ladies, by Clarissa Spencer; Womans Press. 

A Century Worth Liwing, by Mary Elizabeth Haldane ; 
Hodder & Stoughton. 


171 


172 APPENDIX 


Inves Worth Living (studies of women, biblical and 
modern), by Emily Clough Peabody; University of 
Chicago Press. 


SocIAL AND PsyYCHOLOGICAL 


Women and Leisure: a Study of Social Waste, by 
Lorinne Pruette; E. P. Dutton & Company. 

Sex and Commonsense, by A. Maude Royden; George 
H. Doran Company. 

Youth in Conflict, by Miriam Van Waters; Republic 
_ Publishing Company. 

What Als Our Youth? by George A. Coe; Charles 
Scribner’s Sons. 

Mental Hygiene as Taught by Jesus, by Alexander B. 
Macleod; The Macmillan Company. 

Salvaging American Girlhood, by Isabel Davenport; 
EK. P. Dutton & Company. 

Girlhood and. Character, by Mary E. Moxcey; The 
Abingdon Press. ) 

The Psychology of Middle Adolescence, by Mary E. 
Moxcey; The Caxton Press. 

The Education of Women, Goodsell; The Macmillan 
Company. 

Psychology and Morals, by J. A. Hadfield; Robert M. 
McBride and Company. 

The Psychology of Phantasy, by Constance KE. Long; 
Moffat, Yard & Company. 

The Normal Mind, Burnham; D. Appleton & Company. 


APPENDIX 


173 


REFERENCE INDEX OF WOMEN OF SCRIPTURE 
MENTIONED IN TEXT 


Anna, 109, 114. 
Apphia, 160. 


Damaris, 160, 162. 
Daughter of Jairus, 98, 104, 149. 
Dorcas, 161, 166, 167, 168. 


gee 41, 45, 84, 86, 133, 


135 
Eunice, 42, 46. 
Euodia, 160, 162. 


Hepoore, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 


Jezebel, 43, 44. 
Joanna, 72, 122, 123. 
Julia, 160. 


Lois, 42, 46. 
Lydia, 9, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36. 


Martha, 9, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 
20, 24, 26, 8A, 120. 

Mary Magdalene, 72, 122, 148, 
151, 154. 

sag (mentioned in Romans), 


me eG aa of Jesus, 9, 11, 
41, 45, 46, 73, 84, 86, 87, 88, 
109, tise 123, Mak 

Mary, mother of Mark, 35, 45, 


Mary of Bethany, 9, 15, 16, 17, 
ue 19, 20, 22, 26, 46, 84, 87, 


Mother of Peter’s wife, 98. 
Mother of Rufus, 160. 


Naomi, 75. 
Nereus’ sister, 160. 


Persis, 160. 
Phoebe, 160, 162, 163. 
Prisca, 30, 33, 34, 35, 36, 56, 165. 


Rachel, 73. 
Rebekah, 34, 73. 
Rhoda, 45, 66. 
Ruth, 75. 


Salome, daughter of Herodias, 
40, 41, 42, 44 

Salome, mother of James and 
John, 11, 45, 46, 123 

Samaritan woman, 11, 71, 72, 
73, 75, 76, 78. 

Sarah, 34, 


Susanna, 72, 122. 

Syntyche, 160, 162. 

Syrophoenician woman, 133, 134, 
137, 138, 144 


Tryphaena, 160. 
Tryphosa, 160. 


Woman of city, a sinner, 11, 109, 
110. 
via with issue of blood, 108, 


Woman who lost silver, 134, 
135. 





‘ is 
mae FD wh Fes 
Z 


VALS 





Mh 
Ai 
ye i 


oe 


‘ A 
ie 








Date Due 


as 
a 
\. 
i 


= 
> 
lent 


UT 


RO 
al 
«9 
~O 


ra 
> 
o 
& 


7 ~ > 
UO Leaaeet 


we 

é i Dizi 
x LAB 
Mi ol 


NOV 28 200 


© 


’ 


eS 
ony 





id i ?. 
Ayre ene 


i 


? thy? 


Library 


l| 


al 
vigtey: 


I 


| 


| 
0 


minary- 


<TH Ry 
Myles? 
eaters 
TeX ’ 
LAA 
‘ate? 


te 
8 
+ 


fy 
yaletettstare 


cans 


satel 


ret 
63! 
Sislytgh 


+ 


Refeaty? 


wiglelelg? 
St 





stgtera} 
Salaleluetete? f 


